It is not snow on hills, nor
sleeping silence. Your eardrums
beating softly against another’s cheek,
another’s lips, and softly beating.
Nor is it the garden laid to rest there:
the backyard you won’t see again,
the piles left. Weeds. A flannel shirt
buried. Stuff of the mind, the earth.
Rocks for eyes, a heart of twigs, the
mountain lion slowly decomposed
in silence, onto and into rock.
Dust, you say. An old man sleeps like
snow on hills. You turn words to some-
thing else, something which might stand alone.
If you could only hear it.