Nights out here
there’s nothing
to do but count crickets by
each different tune like
counting shooting stars in
a snowstorm
out here
there’s nothing to
do but get lost in
ghosts of who I never was—
regrets floating in impossible skies without horizons
stretching to the future, the past, and in a great unbroken line
everything I did everything I didn’t
curling around me
like a fingerprint
and falling
away like falling stars and
frozen rain singing as
they drop through
the air in a
thousand voices all at once
creeping to my ears from
everywhere
O! These northern nights are
so haunted by all my
dead thoughts—
decisions resurrected by
all this distance between everything
past present future
and the universe expanding to the
sound of crickets