Weathered picket fences hold back
the cold; cradle the last dust dry husks of grain
blowing in across Montana plains white and fecund as a virgin bride.
On the one side, snow mounds drifted high, and the other much the same,
but as good an attempt as can be made to shift the blame
and shift the scales whatever bit can be wrought against the balances of universe.

A wind howls through these fingers as I hold them up,
slipping away between simple bone linkages, sweeping stars and planets
into slipstream assemblages that draw meaning out to lightlessness.
I could place these dim integers in a throttle grip of ghosts
and build structures that would enthrall us all. Yes,
I could model them and market them and sell them all
from where the wind whistles on these cold, hard plains
to where they hold back sand upon the east coast Outer Banks,
and still everything of value would trickle through
pausing long enough only to be seen and be forgotten before being lost.
Ten fingers, integers, post markers, fences retreating to forever
which lies as flat and pale as paper waiting for a message.
Though I step upon the empty grains of summer, or grains of silicate with which to communicate, to build upon it a foundation, a field,
we dare not step between these ragged sentinels of insubstantial and uneven length.

What is between the spaces, the digital integers, the on-off lights,
escapes quickly when the sun goes down beyond the dunes.
The cry of a plover carried on autumn's tide before the surf is proof of this.
So much escapes into the dark when most of what we see is never seen.
The universe is dark matter thrown by dark energy held apart by integers,
and I suspect that one is one. I suspect I am the sea
and the cold barrenness, the hopeful foundation, of bone
that is as permeable as the plover's cry, and you and I are one.