And Company

The redaction of warm weather

to curt, December syllables

finds us on winter regimens,

doling laconic turns

of phrases out of nowhere,

cramming the plain, first

geometry of snow

on the white paper of frozen earth.

In separate houses, fields

spanned by high-tension

lines apart, we

wait for things to numb,

for breath to wire

every cubic inch.

I sit and listen to children

with long poles and baskets

bothering a stand of fir,

the winter orchards

alive with brittle fruit. Now

even the cat comes home, with ice

in the interstices of its paws,

a cat that's muscular

and white anyhow, that lies

like salt on all my ideas

of tracking your prints through snow.