LOOSE LEAVES

Prisoners wriggle free

from the pages

of a foreboding folio.

Hope is unscrupulously

erased from a dispiriting

season. Exposures

are laid bare 

in the broad and darkening

daylight. Laundry's

hung out to dry

in a chilling air. Still

possibility is a nest

that's only woven 

from what is gathered

from leaves

and shadows

and what lies between

surrendering and uncertainty

and the mesh that mixes 

our desires with our amnesia.