EXIT

Dawn rises

Gold and pink

Crisp and cold

In the sink of night.

 

Light rakes the pale face,

Passing tangles,

Brambles,

Wild oak

And the yoke of time.

 

Mine is the grace:

A young stag

Sees me—

Startled,

He bounds ahead

Down the trail

In a hail of flight.

 

There is no out,

But in distant sight

At the very end,

An opening

To which he leaps

From side to side.

 

Confined until the exit,

Me too.

I wait.

 

From nowhere,

A flood of tears

Defies

The strictures of mind—-

There

Flows free

All the grief

And then some.

 

We wait the unseen land,

He and I

In

The opening,

And the still of tears.