father    cuts this blackest month from a year 
January    afternoon music in mothers' blindness

bell of an old-fashioned alarm clock has rung for twenty years in the blink of an eye
frozen stiff shoes    flung for twenty years on the dawn-iced road
feet    trembling guts of little trembling beasts
the meadow's nerve-collapsing green    staying awake for twenty years
old clothes hanging    yet ashes stolen
twenty Januarys    bloodline of dark windows 

father    excises this skyless month in a year

mothers echo    candlelight    so fragile that it pricks
mother    when she's most lonely    accompanies herself to death
covers January   blankets dirty snow of roadside-huddling children 

overnight gales catch what even wounds can't confirm
carved into twenty panes of glass    twenty drops of half-falling tears
twenty times    sneer at our ignorance of death