In Sky Lakes Wilderness

Winter tells the old stories,

the lakes are shut like eyelids.

Earning heat to pay the wind

we thread our skis between dark firs,

pitch camp as the gray light leaves.

Our fire throws wild shadows

against the circling forest wall,

while beyond that room

where we drink whiskey, laughing,

the cold stars glint, the wind

touches every tree. Later,

inside our tent, we feel the air

fall still, a heaviness, and soon

the ticking of fine snow.

Drifting in and out of sleep,

we hear the silent storm

begin to bury us, to mound us under

like the bowed young firs.

Our fire hisses faintly as snow

cools and covers it-nothing then

except the creak of limbs

taking on the slow, familiar weight,

and the small whistling flurries

of the wind. Anything we are

makes no difference in this place,

where trees, wind, and falling snow

work their ways together

in the stillness they have always known-

what strange joy, to huddle here

buried in our single warmth,

listening to what lives outside our lives.