For the listener, who listens in the snow,/ And, nothing himself, beholds/       
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.—Wallace Stevens, The Snow Man 
       
In the walls of his old house 
a man can hear the wires singing  
	as he waits                 for sleep's wingbeats to come near   
through the nightwell     he perceives                  presence     

after listening down the years     
he knows the feathers' susurrus by sound and feel    	
the breath of yesterday sweeps drowsy over  

		from living long he believes nothing 
will arrive     successively
                                            void after void     
and that with luck and patience he may unpick it 
up and down his ribs     the size of emptiness 
that fits to wings     the noise of silence, 
hum that sings 
				          		
the woods and fields may rustle 
whisper other matters in the night 
it isn't only crickets telling fortunes, or the slow hop of wood rats
					taking fright
from great horned owls on muffled wings, or coyotes 
still as moonbeams in the brush 

                                he hears the glimmers echo open up

      catchcall     into obscurity's hovering rush 
rib by rib and vertebra on vertebra 
he counts     invisible numbers     facsimile of time 
where beginnings call to ends 

he calls out to himself 
as the sleeper he's becoming 
lets go     to the pitch and roll of earth unseen 
through sustaining space     
                                         its fretsome web