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.
