Deathless Navigator
       

First light, a chestnut horse
takes the shape of several swans feeding
in a field of just-cut corn.

I inhabit the woman who
watches it all through half-open blinds.

In what I think is the sky,
a self I can never know turns in her sleep.
Now the swans shrink into hackneyed dogs

but my thoughts for them are the same:
a bottoming of the senses,
a wind-wealcened bridge across a merciless ditch.

The sun bruises the frost into dew.
I discover I am wholly unqualified for time—
lacking in minutes, sunsets.

Her husband enters the kitchen to slash
yesterday's box on the calendar.
A dog trots forward with down in its maw.

The sun is down—I'm surrounded by light,
enough to sweep this me together

and make it hold to one shape.
Centuries ago I wrote for months in this room.
The walls bled for me.

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Copyright © 2019 F. Daniel Rzicznek All rights reserved
from Settlers
Parlor Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission