Half the year over. Living
under ice has proved useful.

The doctor doesn’t call
with news we’ve been waiting

our whole lives for, so I lay my body down
in the multitasking plants.

Tomorrow you start the long drive
home to the place

where the dogs love us entirely.
The roads across the inner west

accept you completely
their backs speckled with honeysuckle.

How can you tell me
you don’t believe in ghosts

when there are other names for Earth
we’ll never know or hear

or know how to hear? I want to tell you
I’ve lost the faith

but I’m afraid this would break you
or break the halo of meadowsweet

that contains us. The subnivean zone
is the sinuous place between ground

and snowpack where little critters
hunker down in sublimation.

See them huddled with their hay piles
in the gelid and unbarren dark?