Late February, the darkness
ecumenical beneath the night’s new moon.
Another norther filigrees

fallen leaves and windowpanes
with a delicate, light frost.
Why draw a line between

the living and the dead
on such a night, when the darkness
within everything everywhere

acknowledges itself?
One stares through a window
at the allusive, bituminous view,

a ghost of breath upon the glass,
once again the unborn child who,
after six months in the womb,

opens his eyes for the first time
and finds the comprehensive darkness
the mother holds within herself.