134 Winter poems

All night I dreamed of roses, Wild tangle by the sea, And shadowy garden closes. Dream-led I met with thee. Around thee swayed the roses, Beyond thee sang the sea; The shadowy garden closes Were Paradise to me. O Love, ’mid the dream-roses Abide to heal, to save! The world that day discloses Narrows to one white grave.

Some men who are at least fifty-five wake up in the night to touch their sex like patting the family dog on the head. Others rise to pace the square of   their den as if  called to guard duty. Still others peer back at me from their bedroom windows as if  on lookout for some lost shipment to arrive from Bitterroot, Montana. I uncurl in bed listening for the 3 AM train to whip through Wayzata, hugging the lake so close I imagine it could skip the hot rails and skid across the ancestral ice toward me, an ice train come to ferry me home or away from my encircling command or back to some earlier time when I too was more fiercely racing the night, my body clamorous thumping, the windows rattling, the length of me moon-drenched, snow falling, sparks raking my wheels, one more town flown through.

Cirrus dispersed. As a black night grew colder, clearer, I spied the binary in the handle of the Big Dipper dangling above my shoulder, a pinprick twinkling by a blinding candle. Absent the moon, its boreal corona, I watched the stars rise east of Ellendale, Guelph and Ludden, then wheel above Verona and sleeping friends who farm near Englevale. A thousand miles of road: I’d shunned the pavement which bears the burdens I no longer ferry, the cargo of material enslavement. Six eagles hunted small game on the prairie. An Arab prince’s fortunes once were measured by blooded foals, by sons his wives could dandle, by tributary quatrains to be treasured and his eyesight: a pinprick by a candle.

If you believe in snow, you have to believe in water as it's meant to be, loosed from clouds arranged like asphodel. Because that's what it's like to come back: a slow surfacing, memory spiraling away. You can sleep so long, whole seasons are forgotten like a hospital-room plaster, spidered with cracks in Portugal shapes. You can love sleep like water, love your heavy limbs pushing river and ocean aside. After Maggie woke, the doctors had her stringing bracelets of semiprecious beads, and she couldn't stop counting the kinds of blue. Here, summer, in the high shade of a ginko, she pulls up a handful of stones on silk and we drink grapefruit seltzer, listening to the tinny chime of bubbles rising to the air. She can't remember autumn, so we tell her someday this tree will drop its fan-shaped leaves all at once, golden in the October crush of every plant's frantic strip show. Later we'll see mountains through the scrim of empty branches, and if we can look straight up into the atmosphere, see the same plain old sky revolving. When we ask Maggie what color it is she always says iolite, picturing beads like raindrops, shining azure on the table. She forgets that sometimes things don't stay where you leave them, that the sky fades to white even before snow begins to fall. It's hard, but we have to tell her even sapphires don't glow blue without some kind of help.

It’s a motley lot. A few still stand at attention like sentries at the ends of their driveways, but more lean askance as if they’d just received a blow to the head, and in fact they’ve received many, all winter, from jets of wet snow shooting off the curved, tapered blade of the plow. Some look wobbly, cocked at oddball angles or slumping forlornly on precariously listing posts. One box bows steeply forward, as if in disgrace, its door lolling sideways, unhinged. Others are dented, battered, streaked with rust, bandaged in duct tape, crisscrossed with clothesline or bungee cords. A few lie abashed in remnants of the very snow that knocked them from their perches. Another is wedged in the crook of a tree like a birdhouse, its post shattered nearby. I almost feel sorry for them, worn out by the long winter, off-kilter, not knowing what hit them, trying to hold themselves together, as they wait for news from spring.

Winter is out for a lot this year the beach already is stiff all will be one will be one this year wings and ice will be one in the world all will be changed in the world: the boat will hear its steps on the ice the war will hear its war on the ice the woman will hear her hour on the ice the hour of birth in the ice of death winter is out for a lot. Out for the houses the cities out for the forests the clouds the mountains the valleys fear the heart the children peace. Winter is out for a lot this year the hand already is stiff the crying of children is heard in the house one will we be one life I hear my house slip with the world and scream all that has been screamed the heart rams its boat into ice shells rustling in the hull winter is out for as much. If I freeze fast in the ice if you freeze fast my child my great forest next summer my great fear as I come if you freeze fast my life: then I am a vulture of wings and ice tearing my liver, my living life awake in eternity. This winter is in for a lot.

for Ros Krauss Tell yourself as it gets cold and gray falls from the air that you will go on walking, hearing the same tune no matter where you find yourself— inside the dome of dark or under the cracking white of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow. Tonight as it gets cold tell yourself what you know which is nothing but the tune your bones play as you keep going. And you will be able for once to lie down under the small fire of winter stars. And if it happens that you cannot go on or turn back and you find yourself where you will be at the end, tell yourself in that final flowing of cold through your limbs that you love what you are.

Poor muse, north wind, or any god who blusters bleak across the lake and sows the earth earth-deep with ice. A hoar of fur stung across the vines: here the leaves in full flush, here abandoned to four and farther winds. Bless us, any god who crabs the apples and seeds the leaf and needle evergreen. What whispered catastrophe, winter. What a long night, beyond the lamplight, the windows and the frost-ferned glass. Bless the traveler and the hearth he travels to. Bless our rough hands, wind-scabbed lips, bless this our miscreant psalm.

Dream of Mom’s red parka gone— someone stole it right out of the closet of the burned-down house—what good could it do anybody else, broken zipper that always got caught, she’d jimmy it loose, just part of putting it on—and she was so tiny, the arms too short even for me, too-tiny gloves in the pockets, thumbs stubby, practically useless to anyone but her—they deserve it if they shove in a hand, find the tissue she used and then left there who knows which cold day, what she needed it for, or why.

After the news, the forecaster crowed With excitement about his bad tidings: Eighteen inches of snow! Take cover! A little shiver ran through the community. Children abandoned their homework. Who cared about the hypotenuse now? The snowplow driver laid out his long johns. The old couple, who’d barked at each other At supper, smiled shyly, turned off the TV, And climbed the stairs to their queen-size bed Heaped high with blankets and quilts. And the aging husky they failed to hear Scratch the back door, turned around twice In the yard, settled herself in the snow, And covered her nose with her tail.