Winter Walk

Walk walk, snow covered,
white white like the teacher’s chalk,
this is my winter walk.
It gets so cold that the water don’t go.
Grey and open, the canyon
Of cold beckons me to my holy hope
in hopeless wander in the late afternoon.
Defy the science and dig the silence
because the water in the pipes will flow—tomorrow.
Walk upon the hill, the naked barren land.
I can hold all the snow and dead branches in my hand.
Winter wonderland is the somber, seasonal death,
the cold, cruel, careless raw open earth.
Darkness, duty to survive the woeful
winter soul of February, the sleep and the fast—
this is the gloom before the day, the predawn of the year,
the long night almost over.
The dogs don’t mind;
they follow me across gravel road and empty field.
I only hope for a warmer tomorrow,
a light that will first bring the earth’s puberty,
the raw gregarious and greedy green buds, and then later,
the blooming beauty of spring and summer.
For that heat and hope, I dutifully wait.