EMILY HIESTAND
Between the snow, crows
for Peter Niels Dunn
Hoar settles in the elm's sound crook
rough-wondrous as rangy woodland moss,
and limns the long-swagged limbs that look
upon
through
beyond
a liminal loss.
Comes the lightest, most buoyant of snows
shook shagged from a vibrant beard,
proof-positive of laughing gods - and crows
who swim and soar in a swarm-path cleared
purely by wings, hollow-bones, the right
of way of crows that flows
unknown, shown on wing, black in white,
borne buoyant, again, as aerated prose.
The material flecks of an average sacrifice -
willing with no will, being the price -
sieve an airy clarity containing, providing
the
unseen
unsung
onriding
WILLIS BARNSTONE
On the Floor of the Creation
I
wait. Is there a second when we do
not wait? Quevedo made a man so thin
he was a fork, with rats housed in one shoe,
