Minnesota January
In the northern places,
humans become faint, their skins a breaking point
between nerve and surface.
Numb fingers hide from a dense dark forest of wild,
where cold pushes gently enough to shatter the panes
and creep alone into stark winter light.
Trees abide until they bend under the crush
of ice storms that whipped the air
into a week of razored frenzies.
Wood and dirt and low torn shingles shiver where humans
companion out the months of sun and earth standing
at tilted arm’s length.
As cold and gray press on, as roads gather their asphalt pebbles
and hurl them into craters, slow lives push through
frozen dizzy nitrogen, and ache deep in their winter bowels.
The sun’s red line burrows, streams across the field’s ending point.
Warmer mammals find burial in deep earth crushing and dry,
dens of oily fur and aged carcass, bone nestling against the young, wet nose.
The grasses and weeds that got stuck in the dog’s mouth as he galloped
through fern-stoked meadows, trampled wet and vine-snagged, are bent,
beaten with the worlds inside a thousand snowflakes.
On the first sunny morning when ice glints blinding on the trees
and the smell of water fills air and breath, the tractor loses a wheel,
and the driveway, gullied sore, winding, and rough, is left unplowed.
The tractor sits for days near the road collecting woodsmoke,
icicle, gray haze, the quick work of gloved and bloodless fingers,
and the sharp edge of a passing snowplow.
Days low and muted drip into dreaded
overnight gusts through the old siding, and the clear black sky
vaults early, bright and heavy.
Only the dogs rush in the house starry and excited, coats sparkling
wet and eyes dancing with chill, telling tales of deep boreal silences
and coyote eyes like Christmas tree lights in the dark.
humans become faint, their skins a breaking point
between nerve and surface.
Numb fingers hide from a dense dark forest of wild,
where cold pushes gently enough to shatter the panes
and creep alone into stark winter light.
Trees abide until they bend under the crush
of ice storms that whipped the air
into a week of razored frenzies.
Wood and dirt and low torn shingles shiver where humans
companion out the months of sun and earth standing
at tilted arm’s length.
As cold and gray press on, as roads gather their asphalt pebbles
and hurl them into craters, slow lives push through
frozen dizzy nitrogen, and ache deep in their winter bowels.
The sun’s red line burrows, streams across the field’s ending point.
Warmer mammals find burial in deep earth crushing and dry,
dens of oily fur and aged carcass, bone nestling against the young, wet nose.
The grasses and weeds that got stuck in the dog’s mouth as he galloped
through fern-stoked meadows, trampled wet and vine-snagged, are bent,
beaten with the worlds inside a thousand snowflakes.
On the first sunny morning when ice glints blinding on the trees
and the smell of water fills air and breath, the tractor loses a wheel,
and the driveway, gullied sore, winding, and rough, is left unplowed.
The tractor sits for days near the road collecting woodsmoke,
icicle, gray haze, the quick work of gloved and bloodless fingers,
and the sharp edge of a passing snowplow.
Days low and muted drip into dreaded
overnight gusts through the old siding, and the clear black sky
vaults early, bright and heavy.
Only the dogs rush in the house starry and excited, coats sparkling
wet and eyes dancing with chill, telling tales of deep boreal silences
and coyote eyes like Christmas tree lights in the dark.
~Natalie Vestin
(refrain from stealing, and be blessed with good karma)
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