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From Knife on Snow:
Wicked wedge, its shape embossed
on the untracked snow of my city yard.
Blade crusted with frost.
The sky is, as always, dark
at this early winter evening hour. There are
streetlights in the alley—glum sodium
burns like the light of dying stars.
What arc of history
brings this here, so deep inside my property
surrounded by a wall of caragana
fifteen feet high. Dropped impossibly
like a god’s random hammer
—a silent, unnerving thunderbolt.
Its anonymous menace.
The lack of explanation for its cold
and alien metal presence.
Irrational. Yet surely it called
for agency, intention, to fling the blade
this far. My hedges grow thick
and tangled.
There must be rage
beyond my narrow bailiwick,
my guarded fiefdom in the snow.
This took one hell of a throw.