February

The dark spruce in moonlight, the damp steaming haze –
of breath become as tangible as being
of speech becoming frost in the forest’s clearing
where we pause to cut our skis on the ice
snow-wrapped in the fir enchanted night.

Woods – you are within me; I traverse
your mines of silver in the snow-clad darkness
I ski across the clearing where my heart is
beating like an old, flustered owl
stirring in the dark, snow-laden northern forests.

I tremble in the silence; it is snow-packed, crisp.
What dark guilt menaces a violence
lurking in the dense, shadowed boughs?
What danger stirs and flutters in the trees?
To push off from that old fear – ski,

send the forests rushing back and behind
gliding and slipping by the snow-hung moon.
Guilt is a slalom which a child can’t run too soon.
Back home I’ll knock the snow from my boots.
Some old owl will fill my dreams with his hoots.