Sequels to an Uncollected Winter

1. Morning of Crystal

This is the deathless body, and this

the land’s blood … and here the wine-laced sky

over Iowa resembles a heavenly parfait.

In one more day Des Moines

will be diapered by first snow. A young girl,

barely real, glazes the sidewalk

with a stupid look. Iowa in winter always

dumbfounds the love in us.

Before long, nothing opposes the weight and resolution

of this sky, this wilderness of earth

hardening. When heaviness strikes like a clock

glowing incandescently, the season

opens to itself, as if a familiar stunt

in a traveling show, a fabulation only

a touched young girl can devise for any new world.

Des Moines. November 1973

2. Cooking the Cold

In our smoke house,

in hot fog of hickory and buckeye chips,

we hang meats

like vignettes, independent

of all but the bones

we crack

and soup. Outside,

it’s the same white shimmering

Ohio country

we trust like an open palm,

like an apothecary.

And in these crosswinds,

as our fire builds,

stirrings of primordial dusk begin

fogging in.

Shelby County, Ohio. December 1974

3. Ice Finesse

Long Christmas evening in a farm woman’s bed,

I warm like a quilt.

A December of junctions,

dark, unlittered, airy as entry

into fable, cutting against grains

of propriety. We are decent

enough, naked in the self-paintings

we brush like hair. On holy night,

waking to the screech of pipes bursting

in winter’s elaborate dwelling,

our spines ice us

upright, like posts in the sheets.

Assured of disaster,

we fall back to swarm over

the gifts

from our polished skins.

Independence, Missouri. December 1975

4. The Certainties

Kept animals stray in the wind-driven snow twenty miles northwest

Out of Minneapolis, white-faced heifers each searching the eyes

Of the others, doomed. These distances blowing closed over roads

And county fences, emanate from the hardest parts of us like certainties.

At desolate junctures, hardly moving, a gunshot of breath signals

The residue of soul. On this barren, narrow towpath, the hung

Bellies of cows lunge through drifts forming whale tracks, inching

Ahead, the beasts hopeful as drifters at the hiring gate. Night-hammered,

Blizzard-ripe, we wait by the window with house plants, our fears

Nearly realized, a salt lick of faith turning to stone in our bowels.

Coon Rapids, Minnesota. January 1976

5. An Undoing

My horses are dead,

but the hail has gone.

Three hundred miles south

the ground is fit to plant.

I rinse out in a wind,

dreaming of lumber.

Logs and dead crops

appear in my songs.

In this looseleaf country,

I can bury and build.

Rightly, it is winter.

I won’t need more horses.

Shelby County, Indiana. February 1977

6. On the Upside

On Hubbard Street, among factory signs

And the gay bars further west, this winter

In the ditch does not mean enough.

With innocence, a melodrama of duty

Is played by the big Pole city workers,

Flinging rock salt, unplugging sewers

In defense of a surprise freeze.

Their smiles, like habits, break hard.

Their black stocking caps appear

Stark and vulnerable to the young men cruising

Past hand-in-hand, swimming at noon

Toward darkened theaters and bargain hotels,

Requiring sweet ambush, a ration

Of luxury. These filthy buildings don’t care,

Can’t whistle insults. Soon the Poles,

Immutable as mud, will have picked

These streets clean of ice

And loitering glances, will filter

Home to dinners of wurst and bock beer,

Laying odds against more snow.

And slowly, in its timeliness, a clothesline

Of color will string through the city,

Flapping proudly, ready for collision

With high blue skies, like old lovers

Tossing again in a warehouse loft, straining free.

Northside Chicago. March 1978

Source: Repairs (University of Missouri Press, 1979)