Winter Poem

The quivering wings of the winter ant

wait for lean winter to end.

I love you in slow, dim-witted ways,

hardly speaking, one or two words only.

What caused us to live hidden?

A wound, the wind, a word, a parent.

Sometimes we wait in a helpless way,

awkwardly, not whole and not healed.

When we hid the wound, we fell back

from a human to a shelled life.

Now we feel the ant's hard chest,

the carapace, the silent tongue.

The must be the way of the ant,

the winter ant, the way of those

who are wounded and want to live:

to breathe, to sense another, and to wait.

A Dream on the Night ofFirst Snow             

I woke from a first-day-of-snowdream.

I met a girl in theattic,

          who talked of operas, intensely.

Snow has bent the poplar overnearly to the ground;

New snowfall widens theplowing.

Outside, maple leaves float onrainwater,

          yellow, matted, luminous.

I saw a salamander… I took himup…

He was cold. When I put himdown again,

          he strode over alog

With such confidence, like achessmaster,

          the front leg first, then thehind

          leg, he rose up like atractor climbing

          over a hump in thefield

And disappeared toward winter, a caravan going deeper into mountains,

Dogs pullingtravois,

Feathers fluttering on thelances of the arrogant men.