Winter Triptych
I. Mapping Our Co-ordinates
II. Love in Cold Weather
III.
Thawing
I. Mapping
Our Co-ordinates
Waiting
Cold aloneness
In curtains of auroral northern
Light over glaciers
Moving toward bays to calve
Fresh children.
In these far latitudes
Places have no names.
Time expands in whiteness.
Crystal shards exist under our skin.
My tongue in your mouth
Is not cold.
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II. Love in Cold
Weather
Not being prepared for this
journey,
I fled like a refugee into the stars & darkness.
Naked passed others draped in furs,
More suitable candidates than I.
Hungry saw those who thought to bring provisions,
All coupled, two by two,
And me alone under the northern lights.
An insistent aurora showed me you
Outlined, gleaming, brilliant.
Not being prepared for this
meeting,
I trembled and hid in the stars & darkness.
Your eyes wide with knowing, you
Followed me to every secret place.
Your hands filled with presence, you
Clothed and fed my barren emptiness,
Then stood behind me at the mirror.
My earth tilted on its axis
Drenched in your fierce and gentle winter sunlight.
III. Thawing
I want, in
January's depths, a
Thawing. Remembrance
of summer, of the fleshy moon
In heat like ours.
Frozen now, deep cold
Crystalline. Past memories of
Warmth are only that, are long ago.
This winter which is everywhere
Is a prison I must be warm to leave.
~ Delilah, Winter '98-99
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