Descending Order

Snow falling into the pond 
leaves you weak with its metaphor 
of sadness, as though all that makes you
could be instantly broken down, 
leaving whole only the blackness of the pool
to dilate around you. 
You push yourself to walk on, 
the pollen light of autumn 
gone—empty winter something to return to,
to remind us that less is needed, 
and of what might be left 
to lose. 
Tangles of reddish vine 
clog the path. 
You turn back and recognize 
the silence, but this time 
it closes like water 
around breath. 
Sound gnarls your throat. 
You look toward remaining 
leaves—downturned and still. 
The sky lowers .. . stone. 
It’s as though the years 
of trying to retrieve 
a language of grasses, 
of aspen leaves and riverbeds, 
have been misplaced— 
that they were never 
speaking to you 
at all.