never is it not a time
for warming or cooling.
always it is time and
always it is warming
or cooling.
it is warming to me,
to see the snow
distant on mountain peak.
warming like the planet itself,
so we are told.
some disbelieve these tales,
though the instruments
that measure and read
such things, theirs is
a music not given to
the persuasion of emotion.
these instruments tell us,
“we are warming”,
and so i feel warmed
at the sight of snow
distant on a mountain peak.
down here,
down here
so close to the ground,
where i am, it is
raining. steam plumes
from my lungs on every
out breath, but
it is heavy and thick,
not at all the bright white
stuff born of deep
bracing cold.
it is raining down here
and up there,
at the mountain’s peak,
snow.
collectively, we are
traumatized. i
reach back towards
my first years,
when snow piled
in many feet at the end
of every road.
we burrowed
into these banks,
not at all then concerned
with the roaring
flame of money.
we burrowed into
banked snow
and made small homes.
we, in our coats
and gloves, in our
skin and hair, we
deep beneath it all,
inside the material
that makes us.
all of it, inside
snow.
we warmed our
tiny temporary homes
and felt thrilled to be
surrounded by something
so cold, yet still be
so bright with warmth.
and now, we are
all traumatized.
some of us
warming, others
cooling, but
all of it,
a muttering worry.
every day
our great caps of ice
turn themselves into
empty space.
they peel themselves
from solid, back
into liquid.
inside of us,
our bones feel so hard,
yet at their core,
they are tender.
it is unknowable,
what might come of
this planet,
of all who gather
upon it,
as we spin away
from our Winters.
it is hardening,
to watch
parts of our world
disappear.
it is with tenderness,
that we keep ourselves
from disappearing,
too.
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