How tiresome these memories trundling behind me
through every snowstorm, these blue-and-lavender-splotched
shadows lurking under the shuddering pines
like a child with bread bags tied around her Keds,
her stiff hands stuffed in ice-crusted socks.
But even she could never have imagined
living in a half-collapsed greenhouse
while the sun stumbles against stacked clouds
and the creek thrashes over tumbled rocks.
Three days of snow, one storm pushed in, one pushed out,
and now new snow falling, heavy with water, staggered holes
of yesterday’s struggle to the woodshed already filled in.
Will I ever again believe that under rotten leaf
and wood and rubbish and four feet of snow
there could be the slowed breathing, the steadied pulse
of millions, believe in the frog’s single note, the mantis’
one prayer, all the small lives hoarding their own heat?
Clouds lower themselves to the ground and threaten
to further collapse the greenhouse into itself
as if the season is settling in, as if nothing could ever change.
Photo By: blmiers2
