A Real Winter

A black brook carves the white snow
This is my black and white world today
Robin is dying
and I am alone with the waters
in this dark hemlock grove.
I cannot move into my morning
I am stuck in the black and white
breathing the life of the winter air
as Robin is dying.


"This is a real winter for a change,"
my neighbors proclaim
at the Post Office and the dump
the General Store and the library.
A real winter.

I think back to the last two winters
of rain and brown, mud and darkness
depression, restlessness, and the longing
for a snowstorm to blanket the sorrows
of my view and fill me with the energy
to go among the wetlands and the woods
and be a part of the life of this place.

A real winter
when my muscles are strong
from shovelling snow and tracking.
A real winter when silence settles deep
into my bones and all that moves sleeps.
A real winter.

I ask my wife the weather keeper
when was the last time we had a real winter?
1995? 1987? 1978?
I read that the winter of 1636 was a good one.
710 million years ago
the planet froze to the equator
600 million years ago
life disappeared into the whiteness
of Earth's albedo.
Were those real winters?

From solstice to solstice
the light waxes and wanes
we watch the landscape change
we bring fires to darkness
and we crave the rebirth of spring.

I want to yell at the trees today
Robin is dying
and there is nothing real
except the air that I'm breathing
and the black and white of this time.