By: James Maloney

Ask the lines of late January
in which marrow either is or is not.
Declared four gases from the tongue,
against our stride on Heritage trail.

What is the shape of our character?

Declared oak-rooted shoots as lignin tissue.
Cross measures even hand Potomac overcast,
our due course blossom-confederates
are five months East of the browned cattails.

How lean are aspects of our purity?

Declared mud eats your boots.
We explore instrumental suction,
ingress mire I’ve never called a pond
before frozen crystalline bares copepods.

Who orients us in sound and silence?

No declaration.
Sovereignty is not arranged.
Ice cannot reflect,
my face to me
or yours to you
all else is else
if we stand in our winter
we must declare ourselves.