This is the Winter

(2002)

My prayers are fingerlings scratching an impervious surface;

even gods and goddesses curl to sleep beneath winter’s ground.

What winter offers is for only for the empty-handed.

This is my season to give and forgive.

This winter waited like the rare good mother while I scurried

to find my buried shoe and my nerve, lost like a key.

Waited like one true love, jilted, knowing nonetheless I’d be back.

This is the winter I never dreamed of articulating.

It is a meditation in water, an incandescent white so white

it explodes like color.  This is the winter I need to see myself

godless, singular, cold and still very much alive.