SCRATCH IN MY THROAT

four black birds sit in the snow

on the fence that defines my backyard,

rare since it seldom snows in Steveston,

and for a breath I am in Newfoundland

where I lived a long story of winter light

in a sacred, sometimes scary land

where snow insists on staying too long,

and the birds remind me of Wallace Stevens

and I wonder where the other nine black birds

are, I feel so close to a poem, its breath

a scratch in my throat in the tangled

midst of memories, I live with the past

trailing like a train of U-Hauls stuffed

with stories I no longer need, always hard

to clean the closet, especially in winter

when the stories might still be needed

like old sweaters, though this morning

while running on the dike I heard thousands

of snow geese write their way into the dawn

with a raucous eagerness for light