4 Dwindling

The Wish

And as for me, I dwindle.
I grow thin
and appetite has failed.  

I could have shared.

Perhaps he thought I’d argue;
or was scared
and did not dare to think.

The latter is more likely.

He was closed
and focused on himself.
He couldn’t see
beyond his need the hurt.

His shirt unclean, he couldn’t ask for love.
I understand.
But still I wish I could have held
his hand.

Snow

And so I sit with poems.
The private grief
that poems like this make public
is a grief
that looks at life directly,

leaves us stunned
like cattle axed
before their throats are cut. 

It’s not the death,
but death that’s willed that stops me,
so much pain
that life becomes the death
that death sets free.

How do I understand?

It seems I don’t.
And still I go on trying,
come to rest,
as ever,
with the snow,

the holy snow
that covers and is cold,
but also warms
where cold is so much deeper.

Like the arms of mothers, wives, and lovers
snow is blessed
and carries as a blessing one last task:
to hold within the cold
what warmth is left.

Acceptance

So I relive experience,
wrapped in snow
and fog as in a cover,
what I know
blanked out
and unfamiliar.

Drifts that grow
soon overtop the fence.
Converging rows
of stubble
stretch no longer.

My strength spent,
what now I sense is hunger:
sleet or snow,
the hoarfrost on a branch,
the ridge that blows
the ghost of snow
like smoke.

Absent the cold,
there is no need for fire.
Fences grow
of post and board or wire,
but it’s snow
that sets its own accords,
absorbs the sun
and seeks new life as water,
drips and flows.