The Hermit, by Jeff McAlister

As though the nights here hover, as though

to cover other nights behind them, every word

is the veil for another word, every step

the future of another step: a lantern,

hung from the hand, just the hint

of another lantern, and the hand, too

is the memory of an older hand, itself

a memory, perhaps, of a sculptor's hand,

or a penitent's. For what is work

if not the effort to atone? Each step

is the echo of the next steps, the village

asleep with all the echoes, all the names

that hide behind other names. There is the field

that covers up another field in which a life

was taken and covered with other, lesser lives.

The tree that marks the hovering memory

of another tree. As though the night hovers,

as though a name is memory enough for itself.

The Fool, by Jeff McAlister

Step out: perennials seething, something

flickering in the underbrush: a boat breaks

through the ice, choking toward a city

floating somewhere past what you can see

in the haze. But what could yield itself,

numinous: what shimmer through all

the palpable clutter: the threadbare cloth

you hold, the knotted wood over which

you stretch it? There are pages missing

in the catalogue of the sensible world, pages

gone from its sequel -— no matter. Something

walks through these streets narrower than God,

something balanced, no attention called to itself

in the late snow fallen on the budding dogwoods.

Step out: what have you missed in this expanse

of bodies yearning for the minutest touch,

of shifting eyes, telephone numbers, temporary

addresses? So many psalms, unwritten,

but opened, lined up to greet you, as though

to yield is to discover: at first, the road

empty under an inexorably yellowed sky.

There's nothing more to welcome, or to gain.

¶