A Few Words to Poopus Before a Commercial Christmas

WILL 29 FREDERIC WILL A FEW WORDS TO POOPUS BEFORE A COMMERCIAL CHRISTMAS I believe in the world. It is time to see what our brains can do to make us decent and through that to love. But there.'re these pheasants in snow. When I walk in that valley they go plosive and whap the air, and after a minute go. Then it's terribly still. I run out of places to love. I stay there standing or walk noplace up the thick hill. Then it gets dark. I leave. Sometimes I believe. Believe you would die? When you land the airstrip curls. Your plane slides up. You jump out waving. The trees dig deeper into the pocked soil. We pass through each other like spirits. Grow holy, boneless, and thin; wipe mustard across our arms to heat them, to give them taste. Grow beautiful, complete, fiery within. Eight thin soldiers are following me today. But listen, for this was strange. Each of those soldiers called me by name and ate beside me and slept in my skin. And wanted to know. I'm eight thin soldiers in a row. It is cold. The dogs refused to go out, 30 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW The afternoon light was a glacier of sun. When the children got home I counted their bones, the facts. Tomorrow warmer. Another front in the mind. Do you understand? In the gingko cambium froze. Red crystals of diamond have replaced the rose. I'll muffle my knees. You give me so much. Pray for me slowly while I freeze. There is spring. In the ice leaves have been frozen for months. They do their thing, memorials still. Day after day the hill grows older but it too dreams in its flanks. Day after day the river gnaws its eroding banks making room that way to convey earth. Yet what is spring? Aging we're young again. We grow to our birth? This hill began where we are and is there still. It lies down at night in its day and by day it fills the town with its sleep. From it we can see the thin line between free man and the stone. We open and close. The stone lies still. The hill is the best, is continual motion, in continual rest. ...