Winter Moon

We survive winter inside

rooms filled with heat,

and sometimes when we exit, snowflakes fall

on our heads, too many to count, too many

to collect, like love, or fireside sofas

of northern United States.  We accept

vastness en masse, in metaphor, create devices

with human minds, synecdoche, in order to understand,

because there’s no way to fathom an amount

uncountable, snow, stars, silence

souping through a still winter night.  We survive

winter forgetting cold, hiding under covers, painting

white canvas with gray car exhaust, silver concrete.  

We survive winter forgetting that somewhere

on the prairie, wind sweeps across fields,

creates snow drifts deep and wide, buries fence

lines, blankets fertile soil, while the moon watches,

without judgement, without fear, shivers

and watches one small figure’s foot prints

crossing, from one equinox to the other,

as it ventures out into the wild of nature unfolding,

hiking without purpose, before the children wake,

before it’s time to make breakfast again.