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Poultice
By Scott Mulrane

Though you railed at a god
whose bones were hoarfrost
and refused to know
there were flowers as yet to be named,

I would swear to you even now,
swear, as the years shut down,
we could offer yet still partake,
could sacrifice,
in this imitation of dusk
that others have cast around us
but I deny, our lives,
yet have our lives,
sloughing like adders
our crinkling skins
on the branches of evening;

would swear to you even now
that if the heart’s dark wood
has one path
which comes out somewhere,
you have not yet seen that far.