Letter from the Ice Field, December

In the dream, you stand at the end
of the field beyond the house.

You bury something.
Your hands glow like milk in the dark.

You bend, your shovel lifts pieces
of moonlight into the air.

I try to call you inside
but my mouth locks with frost.

The room of the skull floods with snow.
I have forgotten how you sound.

Your hands fall like milk
into the well of darkness you dig

and I cannot see beyond it.
This is to say, I wake

with a deeper void. I am beginning
to see the body as a well

and your absence as a thirst
that pushes its hands

down my throat, lifts the bucket,
drinks and drinks. A saint said

when the dead visit us in dreams
they cannot know what they do.

You came to the field.
You cut off your ears.

Your hands fell through me—
two lights I almost broke

in half wanting. Tell me
what you thought you were doing

when you tried to lay your body
into that ground.