Living Alone at High Elevation, After Loss

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Winter is toward knowing.
—William Stafford

Overnight, snow has deepened;
there’s this sense of it mending anything broken—
the slight roof-sag on a garden shed next door,
a riven support wall under back fence,
and something more. . . .

In the forest, insulated stillness
comes closer and closer to consolation;
the white soft rind of earth’s orb
mellows the sound of too loud ways.

Five winters adapting, and now
I can drink from a stream slowing to ice—
water too cold for most thirsts.

You of the warm climes reading these words—
I was once you: will our geographies
keep us separate here on the page?
Can the horizon of your mind
apprehend morphologies of snow
drifting night after night?

How the white mountains grow—soft fold
on soft fold—with hardly a rock face showing,
plumed waterfalls turned milk glass?
How from enough distance, even the violence
of avalanche is silent and beautiful?

Venturing out, you meet the sound
of white breath in your lungs.
Among frosted firs and pine, no bird
or coyote call, no tremble of leaves—
only needled, frozen wilderness
and a kind of pain relief.

From overhead, the sudden dive of a hawk,
like a knife blade, startles me,
and I wonder at its prey.

I’ve always found it easy to be fearful,
but attend willingly to the cold
and quiet here—and even the hazards—
under instruction.

Past noon, skies clear, and by dark comes
sub-zero and the lit slush of constellations
beyond any we can name.

Nothing has instilled in me
a hope of riding out any weather
more than this silver flute of moonlight
over new fields of snow.