theshookfoil:

Tell me what to know about the patterns

of wind in Ketchikan and the way movement

can restore warmth. I was once told

that stillness does not equate purity.

We try to quell fears which gape

like a doorless frame into an echoing

hallway. There is too much empty space.

Somewhere, a man who catches fish

for a living hovers over a bucket

of water, cleaning his hands. He sees

every scene in only shades: grey, blue,

absence. And when his wife rolls over

in her sleep, he places his fingertips in

the spaces between her vertebrae.

There are times when no words will do.

Yet there are others, when, from deep

inside, the Earth’s core sends

messages. The cold whispering

through the jack pines like the hiss

of a candle being blown out,

“Everyone who gets clean gets clean again.”