Still Winter

STILL WINTER We sat on our enclosed porch drinking tea, watching the snowfall through the golden glow of streetlights and nearby living rooms, on the wooded hill across the street Owls, falcons and hawks hunt this neighborhood, red fox live behind our neighbors’ house, present themselves in the lit backyard where the deer have just passed and the unpredictable humans are clearly benign behind dining room glass. Raccoons time our movements, their beady eyes masked, their sustaining geography a network of landmarks only they understand I was working on a poem: “…..In November’s early cold she had talked about love. In January’s snow, she spoke of it again. In the season still winter, she decided she’d been wrong and touted her leaving as an equinox gift, an offer of relief that would calm his anxiety before the land became warm. Spring did arrive, sweaty and breathless, an itinerate healer with too many appointments, and the truth he thought he’d seen faded like the moon on a cold sunny morning like the wolf he thought he’s seen, maybe once, maybe twice, near the clearing in the woods where they had walked holding hands…..” “Is that poem about us?” my wife whispered sweetly, looking out the window and warming her hands on an artisan’s mug of chamomile tea “No, Honey!” I said, watching the snowfall remove the sharp edges of the entire neighborhood, feeling glad to be alive in a poem of my own, living in this house with this woman, this winter! Emanuel Carter