Like a mouth set in the frozen ground.

& how our childhoods were informed by it—this innate sense
     of something missing.

Even now I imagine the girls were both pale & dark
     like a flock of moons reflected in water—something seismic,
     languishing.

What I would have done they did—the night clear as broth, the fire
     pure volition.

Who isn't desperate to see into the mechanism any way they can?

I would have seen a house burning. I would have seen a man
     coming to me over water. I would have seen this place, its hold on me—
     the primacy of the deep image & the supplanting
     of narration.

Where do we learn the art of explication? What can our origins teach us
     about who we should be?

Then was the winter of small yellow birds, of visions.

What this place suspended in the world beneath the world denotes—
     truth, & its transmitting.