Before you died, you became the snow I walked through,
sentinel trees shooing moths and snow bees, same as
 
the stories I had been raised on, or the string of pearls
I counted like ivory roses.  I wished for the end of winter,
 
even before that first day.  Wrens kept hurling themselves 
at the windows, bursting into splinters of wing.  If this
 
were an omen, I said it was because  the snow queen wanted 
pheasant, tricking the birds with reflected clouds.  I apologized 
 
to the air, the clothing of the feathers never fades, a speck
in the eye as the moon peels back its light.  How many
 
broken song birds would satisfy the snow queen? How 
many walks through the dripping forest  before you became
 
that crusty wind, the crystals that came down in November,
blinding us all from escaping through the canopy of wings?

When I wake I feel guilty; it’s been a year since
we met last, but something draws me to the forest
where you have summoned me in the past. 
 
Since your wrists were cut, I sip you secretly
like wine.  The barbed edges of your touch still hold me
captive as birds peck and flock to red winter
 
berries.  Snowy wind rattles my windows and I know 
you are chiding me to walk with you on this first day.
I gather greens and abandoned birds nests and form
 
my life into a wreath.  Later, when I weave blue jay
feathers and attach acorns I remember how your eyes
change as you become what I want but can never have.
 
I fear this is the year you will leave me completely, the year
when I leave the mewling of you down by the shore,
and ice covers the lake.  I’ll not watch for you again.
 
Later, when I undress in the mossy dark, I notice my legs
have scratches like train tracks.  I know then, you are gone.
The ice on the lake is frozen enough to walk on.  
 
Your hands will not touch my shoulders like a rough
shawl.  When I walk the lake alone this winter, fish
and turtles rearrange themselves in the silence underneath.
                        

For WS Merwin
 
I want to be wise like the old man, raising
his trees to the light, wind rippling through his palms
 
green flags promising us contentment and peace 
for I know he rises early and listens for the hush
 
before his animals get to their work before the notes
he makes begin to rub up against one another forming
 
his landscape.  Instead, I remember the past with all
our mistakes, innocent and hopeful as we were, invisible
 
to the world as sunlight pours through us how we ripple
then caw our own sadness our own feeble attempt
 
to raise poems like he does, if only we could be alert
to the leaves in the sleep-filled trees when they uncurl,
 
our fists when our fingers open and begin to tremble.