BETROTHED

You hear yourself walking on snow.

You hear the absence of birds.

A stillness so complete, you hear

the whispering inside of you. Alone

morning after morning, and even more

at night. They say we are born alone,

to live and die alone. But they are wrong.

We get to be alone by time, by luck,

or by misadventure. When I hit the log

frozen in the woodpile to break it free,

it makes a sound of perfect inhumanity,

which goes pure all through the valley,

like a crow calling unexpectedly

at the darker end of the twilight that awakens

me in the middle of a life. The black

and white of me mated with this indifferent

winter landscape. I think of the moon

coming in a little while to find the white

among these colorless pines.