In a hard cold time, as the future freezes,
to live is to resist. And to struggle:
to break through, forge an aim.
Maybe this is why we get born:
to feel the life-pull. Squeezed,
so the tender stuff comes spurting out
to suck and push and kick at space.
Somewhere to go, someone to be …?
Dark, light, dark … the wheelspin days
turn on the axis that birthed us –
and from which we still dangle,
mouths flapping, groundless.
Maybe this is why awakening means work:
to grab hold of the Earth;
to meet its blunt blade.
And be pruned back. To find roots.
Like today, when it’s snow-work.
We get out there grumbling, beat hands, and shovel;
carving a path from this shelter and on –
and on to whatever comes next.
Imprinting a track on the blankness
for our boot-dumb feet –
which the snowfall will calmly erase.
Then present its Noh drama:
tight-masked Earth, gripped by silence.
Every tree, fence-post and blackbird’s pricked prints
etched in stark statement.
Words stripped back to mind-breath.
This shivering skin. Our silhouettes.
Our radiant nowhere.
So my hands must unglove and reach down;
must find themselves in the snow.
They burn, with the beauty of anger unbinding.
It flickers; dips like a flame, and goes out –
like the rest. I’m a vanishing track.
Ahead is the white-out.
But now, invitation: to drop through
like a bucket and bring up a deep warmth.
It streams its laughter through the noose of the stars,
in a season that glows jewel-red.