THE LONELY WHITE WOLF

The morning moves like a memory,

air thinning into a brittle hymn —

autumn sharpening its breath

into silver teeth.

I walk through a river of fog,

each step swallowed by damp velvet,

worlds folding inward like pages;

my heartbeat muddled, buoyed.

Leaves, hushed as drowned birds,

etch dark maps on the wet ground.

A distant rooster sounds like a clock

ticked under water.

My coat gathers ghosts of the mist;

each exhalation dissolves

into something that remembers

how to be alone.

Between the trees, a pale light

bleeds like an old secret,

and for a long slow moment

the world is neither gone nor here.