near Eden, Vermont

Just past Eden I roll the window all the way down
as if a loose-fitting ease I have lost might blow in. 
Late August plays its tricks on my arm, heat of afternoon sun, 
chill of air, what has been and what’s to come pressed 
into what is. Today I drive, resisting the hours 
the church bell tolls—one   two   three—resisting 
the instinct to make the usual sense of now.

I wanted to start new, to leave the logical bells behind
and simply live, a being, soft and unbreakable, beside you.
I wanted to start from here, no hindsight, no plot 
compelling me. But thought cannot help but count,
fashioning stories, backward, forward, pretending to explain.

Every telling stings: grief is long, my nightwatch monotonous.

Do I live my life or carry its books? Can I pop a knuckle
and not wish it for the other nine, or spit to the ditch 
without comparing how close? One   one   one
has no hands or deeds: the road is, August is, we are 
brilliant slips of the sequential tongue, confounding our biographies.  
But sparks find mirrors in the dark, hope requires a memory,
and we are long past Eden, gulping at wind that can neither cleanse 
nor restore us. Back in town schoolboys turn pages and pray
for three—and who am I to resist? Still, for the love of beginning, 
I want the world without me; in the cloudswell of every dawn

I want illumination without my shadow cut from its light