Okay, Winter, I know your game
your dark and strange ways
your cool aloofness
your sharp piercing:

A friend's father has vanished into the impenetrable mists of Alzheimer's.
A friend dropped dead--boom--just like that.
A friend is sick sick with a chronic, debilitating disease.
A friend's teenaged daughter is pregnant.
A young friend is being buffeted about by pain and hopelessness.

Winter, I see you take aim

at my heart.

And for a moment I'm tempted to give in
stand there dumb and unmoving


surrender to your spare elegance
your nordic good looks
your quiet enticements
the sudden shock of you

I hear you
I hear you whispering in the trees
in the owl's hushed voice



who will ever know

you send the poets
you send Joyce with his sonorous falling rhythms of snow

you know I'm a sucker for the poets

But then there's this

absurd and fleeting
glimpse
this tickle
this laugh

a chickadee lands on my shoe
a cardinal plays peek-a-boo
in the lilac
as I stand on the doorstep

And later, as I stand in the warm kitchen
wielding my knife over the blood red marble

the garlic opens
clove by clove
to offer
secrets
sprouting green.