2015-04-01 1:30:37 ¶ ● ⬈

## Landscape with Black Coats in Snow

richardsiken-poet:

> (an unpublished poem from War of the Foxes)

> A door had been opened and could not be shut and then

> it was shut. I turned my back and felt thevacuum of

> myleaving. I live in big spaces, so I’m left alone in big spaces.

> Thinking in the language of the enemy. Moving through

> the landscape of the enemy. We were spies and the confidants

> of spies, pockets and telephones, gathering evidence without

> leaving any. Spies feel like they know something important.

> It is a feeling. Opulent. Grand. We invented a fence in the

> middle of the snow so we could meet at the fence and whisper.

> Clemency at the fence. These small repeated revelations

> stabilize something. Faith in snow, bravery in snow. A daily

> maintenance. Is this your sadness? asks the trashman. No, that

> is a fishbone and that is a soup can and that over there is no

> longer recognizable. Paint ghosts over everything, the sadness

> of everything. We made ourselves cold. We made ourselves

> snow. We smuggled ourselves into ourselves. Haunted by

> each others’ knowledge. To hide somewhere is not surrender,

> it is trickery. All day the snow falls down, all night the snow.

> I try to guess your trajectory and end up telling my own story.

> We left footprints in the slush of ourselves, getting out of there.