Yahara Winter

"The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end." – Emerson, from "Circles"










Now, your days
by winter
will go by
with less truth;
is it I who handles
the steering
wheel that scuttles
across the weary
streets
covered by the lead of ice,
or some other
that I watch,
as if from a far,
a moon
watching the earth
by night?
These are not
questions
for everybody.
Winter can sag low
and uneasy
like poor old cats
abandoned
and slinking in among
the alley eaves.
Who am I by cold?
The silver pictures
of Alaskan
summers behold
the crisp
domes of Denali,
and perhaps
we see
the slurping tongue
of the husky
take hold of her
reins and barge
through a crystal lit snowdrift.
The hours,
here, however, don't hold.
Today
the truth of the sunlight
came out and held.
I walked out
onto the ice
rippled
by the melt,
small holes
uprose like a vent
of whirlpools,
resurrected leaves
circled
and I could see through
three inches
to suspended bubbles.
I could say,
for once this month,
I knew all I needed,
for the water was clear
and bright
and the face
that shone in the water
below
as mirror image
I could see