It Can Be
It can be a woman, a dog,
patterns on the ceiling
in the middle of the night,
that tug you toward
the weeds, the woods,
that make a path
where none had been.
The colorless leaves
grieve the creaking clapboard house.
The dog wanders room to room
has done so for hours,
her claws clacking on the pickled pine.
I hear her
at the threshold of our room.
She too listens to the trees
and watches their shadow play,
sifting through the knotted blacks and greys
waiting, with me,
for your lips to find their color
at the beginning of the day.