Five Poems

God

New, translucent, delicate
fritillary of ice. Break it
with your heel and the cold earth
is hard under, Trace it
with your finger and your finger
freezes to the glass, a white sausage,
bloodless. Yet the god
flew with it across this folded
forest, gleam of high birch trunks
and trapped water, brought it here
before he fell. When he fell
he must have raised himself again
to limp one-winged through the blue air,
brushing grit from his palms
over the pitted fields and trees
and scattered roofs, but still
...