A Calmer Garden, Perhaps

We open six beers and by the second
we can watch ourselves interrogate.
We cull whispers, endless criss-crossings
of a vast onyx desert, but no confession.

The perfect measure drums across the line,

but once iambic’s lulled the reader’s ear

Behind the door the dogs are rhapsodizing, out in the garden the crocuses, not quite naked, are waving a little dainty lace. Last autumn, at Hfravatn I was moving mildly with water in my mouth. Remember when I waved my arms around gathering air? Then those days of mid-October snow that blanketed our little evils—and