Deep in the country the Wegmans lights
are gold like one big promise and the radio stutters
like the soft fingers of a poet, months before
he professed belief that we were good
for one another because of mutual ugliness.
Not everything is this Calvinist, withheld
or foretold, though it might seem so: A hurricane
lamp shade the sum of its flickering. It was
a hard winter and there will be another. And in April
nothing resolved but the reach of the bottle
blond snow—and when we set out into the starry
mess the Bluetick hound let loose, her brain a beautiful
zero of love and went and went until she knew
it was time to rub her body like moss along the lake.