in the snow (alone)
in the shadow of a heavy church door
I return
to take back the things I'd given
my friends
I came to steal
my prayers
and theirs
without asking
keeping
knowing...
ruined
streets
roll black
wintric
sheets
every few
(hundred)
weeks
ice claws down the powerlines
silvery transluscent
teeth
pages of a discarded book
stick to one another
heavy with
sleet
lights are slowly ceding to the dawn
I'm wondering when the service will begin
and I know that one of these times
will be the right time and yet
my friends have all gone
and I feel nothing of this Sunday
but the plague of an empty faith
and nothing is what I've come to offer
because nothing keeps us safe
a cat is slowly rotting
beneath a porch
across the street
everything in the ice is preserved,
in a sense
but somehow
nothing
keeps
sometime in 2015