I pick up
and break in two
a dead branch

its rubbery fungus
crumbling
between my fingers

its sagging rings
orbiting their pale
green and grey selves

its earth aroma
once quaffed from
under lifted rock

never knowing
the darkness
that clings to stars

that maps
the lost way back
to its beginning

where a struck match
is ready to do more

Looking up
at January's full moon
snowing

and kept inside
by my meaningless
actions

I still long
to speak the language
sparrow tracks

press in this new snow
even though
my lips would melt

their vocabularies
into half-frozen puddles
whose leftover sounds

evaporating in stale air
might rise
where nothing

left behind
ever lasts that long

Who am I to think
I hold Earth's spin in place
with my bare feet

breathe its sky
into blue shapes surrounding
grey and white clouds

sweat its oceans
from the body
my mind lets sleep

lets fill up with emptiness
what torrential rains
can’t reach

can't seem
to deepen
toward rock bottom

without first
floating snagged
along its surface

by a flood snapped
branch
in a rapid current

lowered in tone
by slow bloated corpses
of the never-to-be-heard-from again

My arms open wide
refuse to believe
they're not wings

yet their attempt
to take off without being
a match for gravity

crashes right
where I’m bumped awake
by the dull light

streetlamps
are not only bobbing
in my bloodstream

but glowing
through my skin
as a constant reminder

of when the moon
used to shine
from the depths
of my blood

without my ever having to
once pay by check
a monthly
gas or electric bill

TRACKED

Moon's bare branches
shadow this frozen pond's
dusting of new snow

Crossing these shadows
without dragging
or scuffing the impeccable
indentations of his paw prints
strides a fox

His head
tilts back as if to look at us,
reflecting the moon
off his wet black nose

All we can do is watch
as he vanishes down the shore
of this shallow creek
we're sure
leads him all the way home

Paul B. Roth, Fayetteville, New York