THE LONG WINTER
Winter slept on through all of March, still weary from its January violence. No one kissed it goodnight. The winds stilled but the sun was weak and barely thawed a drop. The fields, the rooftops, the sideroads, remained bleach-white. Not even your cries of, “I’ve had it with cold,” could budge the temperature a degree. Eventually, the children wearied of bundling up for the modest thrills of sledding and building snowmen. They made a variation of summer noise, but within the walls and it didn’t cheer you. Nor did it awaken winter. The season slept through all the noise a family could muster. The thick blanket it crawled under was itself. POEM FOR FIRST BREEZE
There are days when dawn brings soft breezes, hot air and cold air split their differences, align. On a long walk in and out of shadow, my hair is barely troubled, cheeks take slight motion as a sign of flattery and fragrance. Such good-will. Such greeting. I've known the howl, the whips, the anger. But this is a sigh - long and venerable, with a tinge of cool but a promise of warm. Aztecs took the wind for serpents, the Navajo for a soaring, swooping bird. Here, it's a companion, skimming off the lake, coming down from the hills, the gilded tree-tops. And it's a breath divine, the vinculum of earth's ardor. At my back, brushing my sides, stalking my face - it's too light to move or carry me. And yet, once again, it moves me, it carries me. AT THE MOUTH
Downstream flows half a continent's worth of debris, soil bound for the deltas. It's a slave to gravity, of high deferring to low. And yes, there are people's stories intertwined with every inch of that river, sometimes floating, sometimes drowned, sometimes merely lapping along its banks. Water widens, makes so much of itself. It's like blood to the living, bones to the dead. In the heavy air of a Summer evening, its mud flats bubble with voices a-plenty, in a tongue half-Cajun, half amphibian. At the mouth, constant transformation looks so much like decay, and each drop of water is given begrudgingly to the waters beyond. Then the Gulf leaves the door open. The Mississippi wanders in.
Flight of the dragonfly 