By Brenda Hillman, from a work in progress. Hillman’s collection Extra Hidden Life, Among the Days was published last month by Wesleyan University Press.

   In winter, among laws of probability
     the quiet ones merge
into earth. They sort the fertile chaos
      from flat statement.
What they derived was vital & vast,
a justice outside our usual music.
     Packed into again dry ground
          the eye-
       …