chimes of ice hang from the saplings like bells attached to
gypsy ankles, cold, and clear-voiced as they lip from the limbs
and you and I trudge through the snow, our boots crunching
and the runes of animal prints and icefall creating glyphs and characters
in the snow, like the dead language of some temporary, winter civilization.
you tell me that this is the last snowfall of the winter; we carry armfuls
of firewood, muttony with moss and keeping little toes of fungus. the
fog and the snow dress the trees in morning bedclothes, rising tired
and stretching and pillowed.
the creek barely runs, and it is a steel vein, faultless, voiceless mercury –
we follow it until we reach the footbridge that has been over the creek
since as long as I can remember. the cedars groan in their winter convents
and all around us snow thumps from their branches, dropped babies,
blue hoodwinks. there are snowflakes in your eyelashes, your nose
is red and the world is seen, but not heard around us; silent film,
gray reels, scratches and jitters in the flatness.
we stop at higgins' grave, a bearish german shepherd whose plot is the size
of a human's. the little cross wards off the toadstools popping up around it
and you drop your wood and scoop aside the snow at the foot of
one of the cedars overlooking the grave, gently – thin, pliant green sproutlings
whistling up from the ice and bondage, quiet and
only aware of us, like asides in a play.
we arise. we
listen to the glottal tones
of the falling snow. placebo sun
through the forest canopy, we make our way home,
stepping carefully now for the seedlings
that may be underfoot and going quietly,
so as not to awake them early.
