Kevin Goodan

do not fear the snow fear not the lion

or the moon anymore not the moon

shadows in the trees things without names

carry me from the freezing night

carry me from the fire the lungs the wheezing

the clabbered air scent of alder in wet snow of blue

spruce split to the core and a gust across

the mouth of a well deep down frozen

that gives back no light devil what have you

in your hands what place you on my tongue

it is you who have made me wander empty

countless fields snowplows grinding down

the dark berms to believe not the

moon I fear man was made by the word

and man knows death by the word who do you

say I am shadowless the maple falls away

the wretched oak shudders what have you placed

on my tongue skins filled with fire our bodies

laid down which is the scent of god rising

and after the fire only teeth are left

For Llamas

If you want to understand the beauty of llamas
you have to struggle with the dead.
You have to slip your arms beneath their ribs,
lock your hands together
and stagger with them
across a concrete floor out into cold wind,
through thistles, brown and brittle cheet grass,
your head against their collarbone
your face so close to their face
that you breathe for the both of you,
your breath glistening the fine hairs along a cheek
as you use your weight against their weight
and skin your knuckles
and the bridge of their nose
on a pile of rough-cut hemlock boards
and catch their elbow on a nail on a post
and curse when your arms get shaky
and your lungs burn
you drop them
apologize
and leave them lying on the gravel
let freezing rain glaze their awkward lips
and back the rusty blue Ford pickup up
and let it idle
crank the defrost
scrape the ice from the windshield
and drop the tailgate
and pick them up again
and lay them down again
in crusted snow and bailing twine in back,
their head resting on the spare
and throw a blue tarp on,
strap it down with shroud line
and throw a few heavy boards on for weight
and rest a while, listening to the AM
it is then that the llamas
come towards you
from the back of the field
through the snowdrift that remains,
pass the lean-to and the barn,
past the feeders
and the new brown salt blocks in the salt houses,
past the round pen for breaking horses
and they will move without shadows
and you will know the ice in their matted hair
and you will smell them
as they smell you
as they lean their necks across the fence
and they will breathe out
and you will see it
and they will look at you
with their eyes filled with pastures of another world
and you not knowing what it is you are waiting for.

Come You White Mare, Come Striding

In the hour before birds
In the naming of a few stars
In a few leaves fallen
In ash, ember, Come—
In the splick, splick of a water trough
For in this late month—
I hear so clearly for the first time
Crickets, the weeds—
In mist seeping in from the river
In field, in bone
You white mare
In rain that peens a curved world flat—
Shadow among shadows
Among voices, Come—
Through every weather between us
Come O come you white mare
Come thunder, come silent
Come peal, come sweep, come striding

                    -from In the Ghost-House Acquainted by Kevin Goodan