I'm sorry
I'm not myself.

I should have been a white hexagon
with mist swishing on and off each edge.

When the weather refuses to dip below zero, head to the white mountains
of the hockey arena to hurl cold powder into the air, attempt to block out the too hot sun.

***

Where it is unexpected: a quickening in the sky
or the parcel misplaced, muffled in cold static.

Filled with a confetti of lost poems
today's wind blows so cold.

This morning, the world white as paper.
Silent scribble of your tracks to my door.

And while the clouds billowed white, lurking
like forgotten angels, we raised our faces and waited.

***

The house feels hollow when it begins like this—
scattered small flakes covering hard ground, a thin sleeve.

Like tiny words of doom
deceptively white, our deluge.

By morning it's a different world: a whiteout.
Howling winds, power off, and little firewood (booze though).

Turkey's on. Power's out. Turkey's off.
Sweaters on. Shovels out. Christmas off.

Atop the birdbath, eighteen inches of cotton rises;
Time enough for me to sew another down quilt.

Storm in the toes, thought frozen in a ditch
mountains of blankets shovelled on my chest.

The water lines freeze as the price
the mountain view takes out on my dishes, my skin, my stink.

O Ancestors, sleeping deep beneath
still white hills, how cold you were, you are!

***

On the first day, we help dig out our neighbours' cars trapped by winter's parking boots.
There is a clear agenda, here - to escape our driveway existence and coast along on salty roads.

Outside my window, a facsimile of ticker-tape tumbling—
ragged ripped lines in drafts torn from a grey paper sky.

The wind sighs heavily and sun is caught in blue-ray reflections.
They wisp high, then tumble and ping against window panes.

I peel myself out of home's warmth to go jogging after all
My breath turns to clouds in a frozen forest full of hidden birds.

Someone has spread 7-minute frosting on the arms of the apple tree.
Meringue beards a trellis, the bird bath wears a marshmallow fez.

Hydrangea wears a lacy cap
Leaves glistening as the blossoms freeze.

She knocks two feet of perfect meringue
from her hedge.

Alabaster boas adorn naked limbs.
They appear as lace reflecting in moonlight.

***

Goose feather flakes cover everything
as if we were never here.

The North wind, poor robin, and we shall have: new-fallen, and up to the rooftops,
up to the eaves of the barn. Take your head from under your wing, poor robin, and shovel!

Flurries and flakes troop, finagling their way up;
sacroiliac cracks at the door stoop-one scoop too many.

Sodden shoveler, eyelashes iced.
Put your gloves on the heater, drink with me.

***

It's happened again!
The driveway's rutted tracks are erased.

white dust builds, baffles, badgers,
beds buses, buries bustle-a blessing.

A violent blitz brought this gentle cover.
Still tears frozen and tumbling.

A crystalline woman swimming, or a lean-haunched sphinx
emerged from the night blizzard in the pale light of morning.

***

Out there the day is half full, half finished and still it falls.
Nothing stopping this creature that comes out of the sky.

Groaning deeper than the wind, the maple leans in to the brittle shed.
The dog plows back to the shovelled path, ears cocked for the coming crack.

Hard slow rain squelches the freezing drifts
of rubble embanked in a backstreet alley.

White, curved and softened as skin, voluptuous,
Ah, the wind, mounting, bares needle sharp teeth.

Last night you stole another life
Smothered a homeless soul in your blanket.

A black bear dreams inside her den,
zen-like patience waiting for the thaw.

Raven's cry. His black song dots the sky, as doe and buck make tracks,
half moons all over the yard.

***

We have gazed at the night's sudden flakes and sunlight over the field's whiteness
being so glad now to sink into our hearts' unstrung countenances.

Pigeons fly black in the powdered morning.
Silver wings settle on the trees.

Ducks fly into blizzards.
under withering moonlight.

Our garbage has been hidden
beneath a frozen shroud.

Fence posts in lop-sided top hats
attend my garbage can's burial.

No power at the cottage, we sit
warm by the fire, watch disappearing trees.

I call out to the blank softened wilderness,
voice stolen in flight; blanketed in layers of winter.

Lying post-flu on the window-seat…
how soft the bushes seem in their whiteness.

Frost feathers on a window pane.
Hint of diamond spindrift beyond.

Walk out with the pack empty, raising my boots high to carve a path
for the dark return through icy forest, pack heavy with eggs, milk, news.

By morn fresh deer tracks crisscross through my yard.
They've feasted on my plants the whole night through.

***

White blanketed stretching, twisted garry oak
dancing in the indigo blue night sky.

Silhouette of white against bare branch
against blue sky, and everywhere, a muffled singing.

Wading through drifts, soft crunch beneath my mukluks,
inhale the night's streams of flickering dark and glow.

Oh how you do fall changing green to white,
and leaving me with rosy lips and cheeks and nose.

Our blue spruce sags with added weight that bends
its whiteclad needled reach, aching for spring.

Winter's icy fingers caress my face, I shudder and turn away.
Icicles fall from my eyes, oh how I long for the sun's warm kiss.

Mid December cold from the north descends
sits on my shoulder like guilt quite as immovable.

Can I shake off this white blanket, heavy as winter?
Can I summon springs' green dress, hear again the birds?

Cold paints silvery soft silhouettes.
Elsewhere they cavort on volcanic beaches.

***

Windshield clogged and out of fluid
Car wheels spinning, stuck in traffic.

Gift from Nature this white highway where for the first
time in my 80 years I gear down to 4wheel drive.

Shovel and plow, forgotten heft; now toboggan and toque--
tires spinning, hearts driving blind to the shortest day, longest hill.

When white rain gathers to address expanses
of hollyhock, hyssop and heather, skiers cheer.

It's not the blue glint off a white field,
but the slope and sled down the miraculous.

Slide riding the ice bobbled backstreets
excitement is barely contained.

Powder, waist-deep in glades, a dream;
heady forest solitude skied through.

***

A plague of moth wings swirled the breathless night.
A sound whose name was bitter on the tongue

Like moments, flake after singular flake
falls out of now into vast drifts of then.

My daughter pulls stars from the sky,
melts them them in her warm mouth.

Paper white crystals fly, then fall.
A geometric wonderland.

Sparrow lands on dead phone line.
Avalanche!

Soft pebbles skittering on the drift's crest fly off.
Sifting down, whispering on the angel-maker's face.

"Uppy-uppy", the little girl cries, her new red boots vanished from view,
as fields like crisp bond paper pause before the furrow. "Yucky stuff."

Children, leaving angels to watch over the school yard,
Come in with dusted white hats, mitts and boots.

The crow devours her face.
A carrot nose, donut eyes, and jaunty red hat.

***

No waterfall today. I hear it singing
but all I see are icicles.

Ice window creaks on april-coming ponds,
wintered horses face downwind, dream clover.

The goblet of lake ice chopped and stacked
like crystal jello against the wind.

Miniature marshmallows white-topped milk filled with melted chocolate Hanukkah medallions
A sweet beverage of choice daily for sweaty "home for the holidays" generation Y diggers.

***

On the front steps: dance tracks
of thrushes, winter wrens: a cold tango.

Feathertrails snake to your hearth.
I should be so true.

Bleached sheets. This duvet. Our storm mimics the drifts outside.
Bentley discovered beauty at their core; what would he reveal in ours?

Beneath the bird feeder, a maze of tracks from visiting deer.
Darkness comes early, begs golden light from candles on the deck.

Evening star blinks faint—
the town cocooned in white.

Frail wisps melt
like supple ghosts.

White on white, unseen,
a rabbit runs.

my dogs unleashed into winter's dust, huge circles of wild bite, growl,
yip, half-wolf breaking orbit, they run fast, straight into dark forever.

This is the animal season, we are now ptarmigan and arctic fox—
Or we disappear some other way

Such is the winter of humankind submerged in an ocean of fire,
within it the One standing at the point of ice.

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