COYOTE WINTER

COYOTE WINTER


When winter tapers out, we’ll crawl from covers
dull bones, soft in the joints from hibernation
eyes puffy, these nights of candles, red wine
red wool socks.

We found a cabin with knotty pine walls
called in sick to the office, one week, then the next.
We said eventually we’ll run out of books or toilet paper.
But didn’t.

We say the snow is forgiving.
We say old books smell the same
and go dry the same, brittle like moth wings.
We have a cabinet of canned soup and cords of wood.

Splitting wood makes you sweat, and so does morning love;
both taste of pine sap when I kiss your shoulder.

Once we told the world go on, we’ll catch you at spring.
Us in union suits, waving at windows, fogged by the fire,
mirrored by night. I’d break off the icicles as a baton
conduct the symphony—the heave and groan of April thaw.

They say it is the cruelest month, and maybe so
when winter tapers out, and our bodies lean from soup,
winter fat now gone, have worn each into each,
tossing around, driftwood on a winter beach.

We had a choice—ocean or mountains. We took snow,
set in like this, and waited. We ask the trilliums
with each warm Chinook, if indeed snow just evaporates
leaving no trace come summer.