I compare this woman to resilience, the reed’s stillness, her face disappearing in the soup’s steamy tail.

The blowing snow is a thousand poems, scattered into the river.

We are hemmed to our words, aren’t we, the constant callings,
the beggary all shameful, archaic summons?

Between her breasts is my grief, and the
bones she’s hidden, smoothed in laughter.

To sew together an entire forest, this is needed:
a rabbit’s trail softening new snow.