What’s next, Dear Winter?
Do you have any more frozen mornings
before I can start planting seeds
in the garden?
I will wait, if I must, but
let me not scatter answers too soon,
before burgeoning dreams
have a soil that can hold them.
I have watched too many die
in the snow, where the color red—
gruesome, but admittedly, picturesque—
is best contrasted against this duvet,
saying, “Not yet. Not yet. But
not to worry, all that you thought was dead
is compost, and you cannot possibly imagine
Spring’s beauty.”
Maybe so.
Nothing really ends, and yet:
keep me close to lament.
Mysticism is just another bypass if
I have not wept for Lazarus.
Or my grandmother.
Or Gaza.
Or the families disappearing in South Nashville.
Or the fractures in mine.
Ends aren’t nothing, and
they don’t until you’ve let them
have their way with you.
Letting go is not a mental exercise.
I still want to feel it all,
crumpled up on the kitchen floor,
lingering scents on dog fur,
a flash in my periphery like
a father’s ever-present absence,
and the pulse of blood in my right leg,
crossed over my left.
Come back home.
Do you want to be like God?
Become as human as possible.
It’s all right here.
Immanence is transcendence.
You’ve got golden streets in your neural circuitry.
Chi in your lymphatic system. Have you seen
that photo that looks like stars but is
actually entire galaxies?
Your gut biome.
What do you want to do
with your miracle?
While dying, do not set up a heat lamp.
Let Winter have her way with you,
and then?
One morning, after you’ve taken off
the thin pages scotch-taped to
your most private places,
a warm wind will blow across the valley,
and with it: new color in the soft,
downward glance to your feet, where
all that blizzard melted into stillness,
and in your own gaze, you greet
an olive branch.
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