The cage I welded fast so I could rattle
it to hell and back: I’m in it now
with Trey, who’s black as Cerberus and snuffling
with a knowledge language cannot hold.
Thus my confusion, circling back along
these paths with quaking leaves and breaching roots,
all manner of the dead: yeast rising underfoot.
The night hangs gray as smoke, houselights a mile
or more away. Small snowflakes and my steaming
breath commingle in my headlamp’s beam.
This is the third straight night I’ve thought I wouldn’t
mind a peaceful death deep in these woods
or in the stubbly meadow west of here.
I’ve lived too safe, so it won’t happen. Yet.