TIP

You’re sitting there
in the dark of the theater,
and it begins to snow. On stage
bodies
fling themselves through the text.
It is so good up there,
that you wonder
whether you aren’t thinking it.

The snow could be your desires,
your inefficiencies, your mystifications.
The losses you’ve sustained, the matches
lit on windy nights,
the corkscrew and what it led to.

A cormorant sits in the seat beside you,
the snow collecting on its black, sleek
back.
It’s snowing as well
in the one dark eye of the bird
that you can see.
Like a snow globe, twirling and eddying.
You’re not surprised,
but you don’t understand.

All in all, a slow, quiet burial.

Outside the theater you know
there will be murmurings
of imminent collapse, war even.