Storm: April 1st
What do you fear in the poem?
(I fear that moment of withholding---
especially inside what I thought was free;
as I feared the poem was just like her,
that it would abandon me---)
Brenda Hillman
A Dwelling
I've written too much
about winter and yet here I am again taking it
in hand to throw it
ahead of me and a little
and to the side. All night
the storm’s fallen
quiet,
soft,
and so much snow so much water if I didn’t look out or
if I didn’t know
ahead of time I wouldn’t be
ready I wouldn’t
have brought the shovel in, as it is
I’ll probably have to hip check the door
a few times
and then...
Well.
Yes. Well.
It’s what we say
when we’re used to everything coming
down to this:
when all we’ve ever seen
falls out of some sky (never up to it, at least
not to stay) and lies for a while
at our feet. Or is it lays? I can never
decide. It matters, I know, in the same way
that how much fat I’ll measure out to cut
in for my/our pie crust matters? What, I have to ask
am I going for? Something
savory? With gravy?
Sweet? Custard maybe?
In-between? I’d die lying if I said I didn’t
have a motive for all this, you know, writing
about winter (and pie for God’s sake) while winter finally gives up, goes out
with that famous lamb
or wanting to but because it’s so exhausted
it just falls and falls and falls
frozen water on top
of frozen water. I feel it’s like old lovers who want
to remember what they feel like
inside of each other: not the quick slip in first
few times the explosive hard to hold control bolt out of
the not in time opened fence--and later pulling out
slow
slow
so slow the limp splinters after getting through
no, not those (although the blood it drew then I can tell you
was new
was bruise iron blue)
this bit of loving
was measured, was all
day or night
was hours
was want dropped for something more
than a storm
it was, can you remember,
the children gone on their own
and the door open
and the window
and maybe it’s dark and maybe it’s not
but it comes to this
how over the years we know
one another by something other than smell
or sound, how, and it’s true, it’s like this, a texture of us,
the way snow blows in the clouds, if first one dust, then one crystal
and it turns over and over on its way down
and is, at this point in the storm, frozen,
hale nearly, all the pins and needles
on the window screen. It’s 4 am. I begin to panic I’ll never
be able to move it
all. I begin to panic that I’ve never moved anything
or anyone
at all. I wonder.
I hope I never loved you the way arriving alone
on a slow train makes me need
to wait with my bags at my feet and too bereft of journey to lift them.
I know I’m tired and what I’d hoped of winter at the beginning
of December
is buried so far beneath the snow
it’s nothing like what it was now. I’d never recognize it. It’s probably,
after all these months, got the dumb glaze
of an Alzheimer’s face, glassy eyes, mouth a pout, an
I’m-not-going-anywhere-who-are-you expression
but soft you know, soft as our innocuous
breasts and testicles become
when we’re done with them
when we’ve loved and loved and loved
stem over stern and come up sputtering
when at the end of a winter we’ve had enough of
is putting off spring, when, oh I don’t know,
the last plow of the season goes by
and we wave like parade goers
and then we go back
inside and twilight or not
dying or not
we taste our lips and we smell our wrists
we lift ourselves to it
slow as our bones at the deliberate end of winter can take
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