Poem: Winter’s Memory
Winter’s Memory
You can still go out there, you know.
It’ll be further than you remember,
you’ll have to put on that heavy coat and those boots.
If you go, you will walk on the edge of the farmer’s dormant field,
covered by a cold heavy cloth similar in weight to your heavy coat.
If you look out upon the barren field, the white will blind you,
the sky and ground blending in with each other.
To your left, the young woods spared by the farmer,
trees unladen from the autumn wind,
with quiet residents,
listening just like you.
Once you have thought you’ve gone further than you remember,
you will pass the woods, only white left there.
Oppressive white.
Cold wind will blow through your coat,
gripping onto your shaking bones.
Drudgery will seep into your stiffened feet
from monotonous repetition.
Desires for retreat will fill your head,
When at the pinnacle of your want,
you will be there.
It will be there,
the ditch at a high slope leading into an ice-crested snake, slithering slowly.
A slight babbling will be heard from the serpent
amongst the whaling wind whirling about you.
A blackboard gently coated with white powder,
a plastic warning to what lies below.
You are close now, the ditch waiting.
A weeded curtain that hid the serpent in summer months,
now brought by the dense, clotted white bedding.
A different hesitation will drift through you,
the slope a daunting sight,
it passes.
Half sliding, half climbing, you disturb,
the intricate laid-out homes of those hibernating herbs.
Gripping on to those sleeping reeds to anchor you,
you’ll see
that little hole of spring.
A drainage pipe juts out of the slope.
Melted winter rushing into a waterfall,
landing in a granite basin leaking into the snake.
Bright living green grows on that basin’s lip
wet awake, moving green.
That dense green cultivates into jutting strands,
opposing their sleeping brethren, heads higher than the rest,
a crystalline coat preserves their post encircling the basin lip.
On the outskates of the crystalline clade clover guards,
an in-between,
glittering frozen sculptures bleeding
into a crusted hovel of cold dust.
The waterfall’s song easily drowning the serpent’s babbling.
Yet no known heat to protect it from the weather’s control.
The answer for this phenomenon is simple
To me, it is only wonder.
That memory of spring preserved in winter’s love.
Unlike that little miracle,
That little memory.
You are still subject to the machinations of cold.
You will need to make the trek back,
On a path longer than you remember.
Away from that little hole of spring.