Aurora Borealis, and: Obscura, and: Thaw

Aurora Borealis

Before all this, there was the cabin, its basketof potatoes and jar of milk, its whiteenamel sink and heirloom Austrian rug we fell asleepon after midnight runs, curling with heatand thoughts of each other stretching like a roadto either horizon, heater blasting, ploughing throughthe soundless white, the blurring linesof flakes, a beer passing between us, stopping for mooseand trains and fox and cranes and once, near Circle, blind,having lost our world to high bright drifts, and once, not blind,not missing a thing on wintry Sheep Creek Road, strewnbottles sparkling, leaving the truck without a word, hurlingglass in every direction, breathless with what we thoughtwe could save.

Obscura

It was a one-room cabinstill missing some windows. Starlight,

snowlight. Far from the world, far enough the darkwas true, could be its truest.

Nights we'd stand out under stars streaming, sung toby electric wires and cold.

Shaking the scene now, snow falls,smoke rising up to meet it.

Wasn't there somethingwe could make once? A small,

simple box with a tiny holefor light to come through,

make everything clearer? Didn't it workby its smallness, its dark?

I swear. I don't know wherewe would have needed to live.

Thaw

I loved your father mostwhen I stole his slippersand went to him and confessed.He knew. I could feel itin my teeth, my feet were that cold.

Today's winter fields shinewith emptiness. Sometimesa windmill. The barns tooare giving up, in patches,their last disguise.