This Morning After Snow, the Body Scrapes Off

sludge, is mere action. It strips the sleet from the walk
at dawn, blue-lit, forging a path as water would,
with that constant stream of spite for solids, whose fixed

contented stupor everyone wants. A pain—
that we're mostly water and therefore subject

to the flaws liquid has, in addition to the joke
of being aware. Best, if we can manage it,
to annul thought—to hunch frozen, ground-bent

and sure as bullies, fixing the brow as if
a thread were drawn from leaf-rot to face, sewn

up to the fickle air. Best, after too much
vision, to be only might—an organizing
grunt, a mass. Gutted. Shoveling corewards.

Copyright © 2008 K. A. Hays All rights reserved
from New Orleans Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission