Wind teaches the snow
to blow open the front door
in the night. Mad, you wake to close.
When we make the air hot
to cut the cold, it burns the world
cloudy. That’s the back-end.
Handle it. Test the yellow leaves
for burns. Flowers grow from ash
but they will not grow from snow.
Stone could go either way.
Most stones are signs.
The pimple in the crease
of my nose, (of all the things
my hands will do today,
the most difficult
will be teaching myself not to touch it.)
All day our proximity is wrong.
My hands lack the functionality
to touch you. I see your radar screens
and there are radio communications
all night between us while we sleep.
The front door of my heart is blown open
and you have snowed in. We live here.
When it gets too intense
you wake up and close the door.
There’s a ridge on the edge of the city. You used
to walk the railroad tracks up there,
tracks without a train. In metal and in memory.
The dining car. The chapel.
If the train wakes up, I will roll down the side of the
ridge,
here, let me show you. Under the snow sleeps the burned
leaves,
the old metal, the first time you fell.