Subject lines on every request scream
these words. Text bodies detail wounds: 
hungry, homeless,
therapy dogs, 
coastal wildlands, 
war-maimed, unheard wolves,
starving dolphins, NAACP,
election fraud, tax equity,
Greenpeace. Red Cross. 
Mercury in rivers.
Your mailbox was full of these too. 
 
We endured the last week
between winter holidays and
we gave to some or them.   
The doctors gave bad answers.
A teen killed himself. 
One friend’s sister
died in her favorite chair
two hours before the party.
Bills went unpaid. Shoes wore out
or cramped the toes of the growing.
The roof leaked. We did not send
relief to Yemen. 
 
We seek hope as if we can wrap it
like gauze around our pounding skulls. 
We will do what we did
last year. Take what comes.
Speak up. Practice
kindness at every
last chance.
                        

How easy to imagine sorcerers afoot, 
studying a comet, their plunder-walk 
in green robes and scarves, scooting
behind bare red oaks and ancient
sugar maples, clutching at ironwood
to steady their footsteps through drifts.
 
This night I would have them 
search for truth in a rarified sky, 
for the Dipper pouring love
to the shivering. 
 
Three sets of footprints.  
Red fox, bobcat, and doe 
hold up to plummeting cold.
With what faith they cross
the road to the woods. 
 
What do they know of each other, 
of my dogs, of me? These trees 
note passage, hover over
revelation of relations—
a forest king cake
of rabbit scat and trail,
frosting of moonlight.
                        

Say what you will about snow
(did I complain last week?)
that the snow-crust pack is so dirty,
littered, spattered, beaten-down and stained
that I wished it would snow again
and when the blizzard came and I didn’t believe
until I saw two inches falling each hour
how those tiniest of flakes showed 
that the littlest things done purposefully 
and well, over and over again may 
clean up the mess we live in.