Nonetheless, I consider the Language of Windfall

I watch the snow come and go—unsure
of the difference between absent

and returning. The body is always
both at once, as is the cottonwood.
In its back—a hollow

snag I hadn’t noticed
until you pointed to it. The physics

of desire requires a falling body.
At my feet, is the peeled skin

of some small, wild dog. Silver twitched
and marbled, my instinct is to look up.
Buddhists would say
that underneath our ordinary lives,
there is a fundamental groundlessness—

what’s more true:
the juncos skirting waxberries
lacelike an inch above the earth, or
my malleable soul hovering
just above my head? Last windstorm,

a cottonwood
shattered the driveway. I saw it

quick and glinting. One owl rose—backwards
and then forwards—nothingness
is windswept and unclutched. In that darkness,

I let myself in.