Someone said there are holes in the universe,
a vortex where light bends and collapses.
Where there is no escape. And today
there is a fog that is stubborn, thick
as the proverbial, so much so even geese
have stopped flying low over Alpine Lake.
It’s as though the world were upside down,
white-clouded, nebulous.


Someone tosses a stone, something hard entering
the pliant, bottoming out. To leave this world
means to have a permanence most wouldn’t
want, at least not right now, not knowing
in which end of the sky they’ll find themselves
or how many steps to the precipice or how far down.
If you have to go.