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The Hills in Half Light
Or will we be lost forever?
In the silence of the last breath
Not taken
The blue sweep of your arm like a dancer
Clowning, in wrinkled pajamas,
Across the sky the abrupt
Brief zigzag of a jay...
All night the whiteness
And all day.
Once we have been lifted up
Into empty morning like ice
In the darkness of these white fields
Neither the ghost tracks of skis
Nor steel skates will wake us
Where are we looking for each other, separated
On the opposite hillside I see you
Miles away from me, a dot
Of faint color reddening, small bruised warmth
Opening its cranberry mouth and saying,
What are you saying?
*
Under a cold blanket
An immense loneliness stretches
In every direction with no fences.
A few sticks tweak the crusted snow:
Thin remnants of an army
Of lost soldiers.
I see footsteps ahead of me but whose
And where will they lead me, parallel
Or converging? Is it not possible there will be one jet trail
That will not vanish,
Two phantom ribbons unfolding
That will not feather themselves away?
*
Wrapped in our white parkas
In what shifting laminations, snowflakes
That mean nothing, transparent eyes spitting,
What glacier will we choose to lie on,
In what igloo rest
Barely breathing, in an air pocket
Just below the surface
Rustling beneath blizzards
Where is your foot, most beautiful
With blue toenails
I will be looking for it always
Wherever it is, next to me
In the darkness
Of rumpled white sheets,
Pale siftings, clouds
Sudden scarves of ourselves gusting
Loose, sandpapery as snow lifting
In what chill citadel of ice crystals
Will I find you?