As I become accustomed at last to gray dawn and its labyrinth—
a fine-etched map of running paths, routes crystallized
on dormer glass—but before I’ve decided to trundle my sleep,
lace wire cleats, and brace against a crush of ice
that squeaks beneath my gait, I’m unawake and unsure how
I came to rove this place (where sky always has a bone
to pick, picks one to shatter across the frost, or starts a thaw
to flush my dusty freckles out of hiding), chafing
at soles. Like plum pumps I owned years ago, peep-toes I couldn’t
stand in, or let go, had to go on dancing in, though
they guaranteed a barefoot dawn, or being baby-doll-carried
home, and smarting all the way. Next day, I’d slit
pillbugs of blood blistering my feet. Race through every
rendition of sleet, however numb—a daffodil may break
the snow’s omniscient fondant, its drive less daft than mine
this morning—I’m set to outpace, so erase, my seasoned course
of failure. I do this without fail. A hundred times I’ve cut cross
lawns, where raisined moles blot the sod with dark missurfacing.
I trip. And grit is in the going, in the tunnel-down deep—
but god is in the gasp, and then, the dead-end as it springs.