colors

The cardinals follow not to follow
but to call. Oh, they call after me
and they recall me to someone
with their song. When I'm done,
done chasing the whites that swirl
on top of black ice, where will I go?
The cardinals, they know it and they follow.
They know I'm their red, and the white
skittering snow, more than I am a who
or what watches it and listens
to them in this blue alone.

the eye of winter

I've spoken ten futures
into the eye of a winter's white-
blinded was. I'll speak one more.
I'll tell it, not blinking, what it will see
isn't what was, isn't what was lost,
but it is what we've learned. From it,
I'll take the chill. I've taken its biting
wind, to speak. And so, to speak
to it, I speak a name first. It assures
me. The eye of winter reassures me
there's a web hidden in its cataract
white, whiter still. Hidden in those
sticky crystals is a future too.
If you'll speak it to me.

dead of winter

The dead of winter, very alive, glide on. White hides
in the inside of the treads they don't leave. The sparrows've
fattened up, but I see no sign of food or love in the flattened
Styrofoam cup the sidewalk's smile has become.

the first poem

the first poem of the year isn't, it can't be a tree
or lovely. It is love's, and my love uses
its roots to see: all water's a soul drawn free;
the earth's our heart but muted; and the truth is
my god isn't a god who'd not come unbeckoned.
she comes in the swarms of becoming seconds.