When the light, pummeled gold, casts the windows of houses up like foil

and the dusk begins to soften your bones toward snow

as you sit, turning photos in the album, each one

a hinge, or wing, the soft black feathers

sleeping under there, and the page another hinge,

and the book another in the creaking house

on the earth with its creaking trees, then you, too,

can step out into the darkness

onto the vast gleaming page of passing through.