Back where I’m from, people ask me if it’s cold
where I live, as if expecting
a “Yeah bro,
Fucking cold.”
But the truth is that Minnesota winters
are worse in the telling than in the living.
The night that I remember
being below twenty, was only below ten,
the day when the snow crept up the door like a thief,
there was more in Wisconsin,
and when my bike suddenly pirouetted in the street ,
it was alright because
there were no cars coming.
There was the time when, alone,
I trudged up to the old Indian burial mounds
in search of the inspiration
I stored away during the fall.
The bluffs were blue and patched like a jacket,
and the river below muted its headlong rush
beneath a choppy blanket of cotton.
Written on a wall—‘Lord Jesus Saves’
and I wondered what exactly he saves;
nuts like the squirrels, sun like the sky
or words, like I do.
This time of year, an embrace in your bed is always
warmer than you expected,
the slow-falling drapes outside
a noise ordinance,
and the collective, unsaid conspiracy against the weather,
that much better of an excuse
to spend our hermitage together.
