Wintered

       I never knew that I loved winter.

In fact,
I must have mislaid photographs of white places
during the storm, the black and white of a
gazebo, or the distance between everything. And there
is a vertigo of song here—it is clever,
       maddening,

                         increasingly       December.
I am here again in the season; I carry a talisman,
a rosary, and a string-of-letters written
in white.

In the evenings the cluster of city lights rein in
these eyes— they clarify the low clouds that hang
from the sky like summered mist, but summer is not home.
And I think
I can see spring—an opening scene,
where mountains grow and fingers spread cool,
begging for release.

(I can still feel the laughter each
time I turn the soil.)

At times I lie like a lily without stem, speak to it
in its own Italian,
mouthing the words I long

to hear. At times, I fly like a gull into interstices.
And with no one looking, I fall deeper into the lungs of
Neruda, taste the thread— open dividers that held
for so        long.

And with little breath, I dribble language, hope to rise
from the
hard of
      a season I dislike,
       but still,
                    but still,
                         but still, the pearl of my spine
                                      will not be strung!

So tomorrow, I sleep like
the past [lovers] that knelt before it.
In spring I will sow a blossom, a yellowed daffodil
from bulb. It too will brighten this city, where
in this very moment, seems sheltered in white.

*Draft II