Come the first days of snow and cold,
black arms of trees, gray sky.
Inside this little house

lamb stew with roots, 
baked apples, split skin bubbles juice.
I’m snug, alone.

But days go on, the north wind 
howls my song, alone, alone, 
abandoned now my books, the cats

growl and scratch, upturn
the rooms, there’s nothing
in the fridge, I order in,

crack open sugary shells, fortunes,
toss them into night,
and shuffle off to bed, remembering

the boy who feared the dark, sleeping alone,
and was told to think of Jesus holding him.
“Yes, but I can’t feel his skin.”

Tonight, the wish to feel skin 
makes me wince. But I’ll wake 
to sun upon a brilliant field

on which a line of cloven prints
 is carved, striding across 
the glittering crystals, 

wishbones, hinged like wings.
	

Pyramid Lake, NY

It could have been a hundred years that prayers went up
 and down this place   —Margie Bock 

Fifteen blue, buckled wooden steps
up the narrow staircase named the “thin place”
in a poem framed above the stairs that you
could read as your trudged your way.
Fifteen ancient painted steps that seemed
a mountain at first glance, high and tight
with Mother Mary at the top, arms open
with downcast eyes beside a tarnished mirror
that made me a wraith.  What would I find
at the top, in my little room overlooking
the lake--where the poet claimed God
was to be found-- but no, I wanted
God everywhere, in my room,
in my heart, on the blank page, 
in the women I met, in the caroling
loons, the restless trees, the gravel
paths, even in smoke from wild-fired
Canada.  Especially in this thin place,
which is the place of struggle, creation,
birth, which is the place we need Her most.