Winter Song

Where did it begin?
We forgot to mow the lawn
Too much time spent
With electric deck of cards
Where did it begin?
One day the words were gone
Letters lost and found
In someone’s yard
Kids fall down in the snow
They used to
Shopping carts, a highway
Toward a single spire
Mask and glove and pipe
But not much learned
When you let me in
Against that careless fire
All the farms all the farms
All the freight
All the books had burned
Scratching out a past
We don’t remember much
Words come apart like
Tendon shattered bone
Once there was a city
You knew well its touch
Still got the linen but
The memory’s thread is gone
Kids fall down in the snow