Paint

You'd think it's easy to come up with words;
the moisture once again seeps through the September and the cracked paint
into the grey between hallways and second-hand memories;
local minima of motion,
windchill in the kitchen,
mornings that open into nothing at all

the words are broken, stunted and too slow
breaking apart at the touch of a hand
I sit alone in the garden by the ash tree
write songs without melodies
of things I have never seen
and of the soft, slow, tender acuity on a Sunday
that might once more may carry meaning