Adagios

March

As at death’s threshold we shiver, made old without growing old, by the March cold. But under the snow- flakes’ slow tumbling adagio— by winter’s low sun, lit gold— we almost unfold our hearts to cold, almost loosen our hold on what we know of blown snow shadowing the window and the lamp’s dull glow like a debt we owe to Plato, but for now withhold. It’s cold, but no longer zero. Warm enough to snow. We are almost consoled.

Fairy Tale with Ex-wife

After thirty suspect miles, I called, a rusty pure sign creaking overhead, and we were right: we were wrong. The sign had been a sign, we sighed sourly, as the storm we were trying to beat beat down on us. By the time we slid, white-faced, into the gravel drive of the fix-it shop, the icy trees burned with horizontal light amplified over fields of sleet.

The used tv couldn’t get a signal out here, the woman said, but it worked fine, and we could always bring it back. All night we huddled in our coats on the shop’s gold shag and shivered underneath a brown plaid blanket. At eight she handed us a pot of watery lentils, spiked with small twigs, maybe rosemary— we didn’t know. You looked at me and said, “Hansel.” “Gretel,” I chuckled drowsily.

At dawn we skittered to the interstate, and at a Waffle House split a scrambled egg till the road cleared or we thought it had. and drank, for almost an hour, our bottomless cup.