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A Cloud of Words for Winter


by Sam Rasnake


The poverty of my words — an empty

birdfeeder in deep winter, the ground

snow-covered under skies thick

 

with grey imaginings — has no way

of knowing the secret places.

What I would say hides

 

in the heavy grain of rock, smoothed

into cold river bottom that no hand

will ever touch, no sun over pine

 

and laurel will ever notice. The trout hovers

in shadow but explains nothing

in the fan of tail against the current.

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