for my husband
And we’re scooching on the surface,
and we’re skimming on the surface,
and we’re walking on the crust and
we’re up to our crotches in rotten snow,
sharp crystals scratching our legs,
our shoes drenched, our toes cold,
and we climb out to skim again on the surface
and sink. And skim. Get stuck. Crawl out.
It was, of course, a relief to find
ourselves again on a dry dirt trail,
but it was wonderful, wasn’t it, to flounder
and still find our way, I mean
today, but I mean for thirty two years,
falling in deep and choosing again
to take the next step.
Posts Tagged ‘snow’
Walking Across Snowfields at Tree Line in May
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiking, husband, mountain, partner, snow, tree line on May 16, 2026| 4 Comments »
One in the Blizzard
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged driving, focus, haikuling, snow on March 7, 2026| 4 Comments »
following tire tracks in the snow
the whole world
reduced to two lines
All This
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ache, heartache, paradox, peace, politics, snow, woods on January 11, 2026| 6 Comments »
after the killing of Renee Nicole Good
Into the woods I carried
my broken open heart,
knowing it rhymed with millions
of other broken open hearts,
and there, in the silence
of spruce trees and new snow
and cloudless blue sky, the heart
gaped with its relentless ache.
I so deeply loved the world and
I was so terribly upset by the world.
All this. All this. The snow was
impossibly peaceful. It softened
every broken rock, broken stick.
I felt, at the same time,
the raw wound of injustice
and the infinitude of primeval
peace, both of them saying,
remember, remember, remember.
Walking at Night after the First Big Snow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged light, love, moon, snow, winter on December 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I want to live
my life like
a night made
bright by
moonlight
and snow—
there is
nothing I can
hold onto,
nothing I can
even touch, but
there is no
doubt how real
the light is,
no denying how
that faraway
light reflects
to hold me.
Practice in Being Present
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged geese, presence, snow, spring, story on March 18, 2025| 4 Comments »
As it is, I am grateful for the snow today,
though yesterday I reveled in the warm air
and clear blue sky that felt like spring.
Today still feels like spring, but with snow.
The geese still wander the field on foot,
a thick white layer gathering
on the wide gray platforms of their backs.
The swallows still soar and swoop
in tight formations, unbothered
by thick flakes of snow. The red-winged blackbirds
still trill. It seems only right the heart
should still practice how to fall in love,
no matter the weather. I am thinking of
how yesterday Wendy said of herself,
“What, did I think nothing bad would
ever happen to me?” and how just saying
this out loud helped her stay present—
less the story of herself, more herself.
I’m clear it does no good to wish away snow,
just as it does no good to wish away grief
or the tyranny of cruelty. So when thoughts
of grief and fear roll in like a squall,
I try out Wendy’s line.
What, did I imagine terrible things
wouldn’t happen to me? To the world?
The geese are sliding now into the pond,
the snowflakes disappearing
into dark water. With no effort,
I fall in love with the ripples
the geese leave on the surface,
a momentary story of where they’ve been.
How quickly that story disappears.
Not Exactly Lost Near the Bitterbrush Trail
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged lost, nordic skiing, presence, snow on February 24, 2025| 6 Comments »
In the flat, low light
of morning there
is no way to see
the trail in the valley
of snow, and so,
new to this place,
I let myself not know
where I’m going.
I move more slowly,
let myself be led by
the trail as it appears.
Each moment is like
a new invisible map
that proclaims again
and again
You Are Here.
Poem in Which You Are Storm, I Am Meadow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, love, meadow, snow, time, transformation on February 17, 2025| 6 Comments »
By noon
the snow
that changed
the world
from brown
to white
in just
a day
seems gone—
the meadow
however, remembers
the gift.
Come spring,
there will
be green.
After the Barely There Snow Storm
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged joy, love, snow, whole heart on November 14, 2024| 16 Comments »
It happened. The tiniest perfect stars
fell from the sky and into the yard.
Dozens fit on a single brown cottonwood leaf.
There were millions of them. Millions!
An uncountable cache of crystalline stars.
When the sun rose, I ran from shadow
to shadow to witness them before they melted,
joy rising with every star I saw.
Within minutes of morning, they were gone,
but no sorrow came from the loss.
There is no name for this kind of love.
All day, it has lingered, the thrill
of bringing my whole heart
to the moment without ever once thinking
of holding anything back.
Planting the Questions
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dormancy, growth, love, questions, snow on November 7, 2024| 8 Comments »
All day the first snow fell in the valley.
Hour by hour, I watched
the brittle world become new.
All day, I marveled at the human—
equally capable of cruelty and compassion.
Inside me, strong questions gathered.
I planted them in me like garlic cloves.
Every gardener knows how cold
only accelerates their growth,
triggers more development come spring.
I imagine how vigorous, how robust
these questions will grow
into actions I can’t yet conceive.
All day, the snow kept falling.
I imagined it was love.
There was nothing it did not touch.
An Opening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clarity, grief, perspective, reframe, snow, snowstorm on January 15, 2024| 4 Comments »
Mourning settles in like a midwinter storm,
clouds low, snow thick in the trees,
snow thick on the rooftops, thick
in the road where you’re forced to go slow
if you go anywhere at all—
squall after squall of thick fat flakes falling
till they break the boughs and thickly cover
the whole visible world
and then,
a parting, a lifting,
a clearing so startling, so blue you swear
you will never see the same way again,
not the snow, not the sky, not even yourself,
having as you do now, some small hint
of the weight of this life.
One After the Sauna
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged angel, cold, sauna, snow, sound on January 11, 2024| 13 Comments »
in deep, new snow
a naked angel makes wings—
her song, how it soars
Memory, Like a Passport
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, joy, memory, snow on December 27, 2023| 8 Comments »
That winter night you streaked
down the walkway in your undies
and jumped into the snowbank,
I think of it now,
your raucous laughter,
your feral joy
as you emerged frosty and grinning,
I think of how you wore your elation
on the outside,
not hidden up a sleeve,
not tucked in a pocket
where no one could see.
It didn’t save you, your wild joy—
perhaps that’s not what joy is for—
but some nights it saves me.
I still smell the clean sharp cold of it,
hear the glee-giddy,
mirth-ringing choruses of it
like an anthem to a country
that has changed its borders
and still, somehow, lets me in.
Contact Shine
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, love, moon, shine, snow on December 26, 2023| 7 Comments »
Sometimes we don’t know
what we’re capable of
until we find ourselves
in the light of another;
suddenly we’re radiant,
downright incandescent—
as tonight, the blue snow
gathered the light of the full moon
in its facets and it flashed and sparkled,
though the snow owns no shine of its own.
This is how it is with my heart—
when I am with you,
it becomes a luminous living thing
and I barely recognize it,
resplendent-sprung and bright-winged,
where just moments before
it was dull. Even the memory of you
can make me shine.
As if nothing is lost.
As if we are made of memory.
Tobogganing with My Teenage Daughter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, play, slow, snow, speed, time, winter on February 24, 2023| 7 Comments »
Perhaps I wish for something dangerous—
a rush, a breakneck ride, a snow-drunk risk.
Instead, my daughter and I slide the toboggan
down the drive with a languid, slow-motion
sluggishness. And we laugh as we urge
the wooden sled forward, creeping
down the hill. After a few laps, the run
is fast enough we can build a small jump
at the bottom, but it’s more of a bump
than a launch. What is it in the heart
that loves a surge, a swell of excitement,
a dance with danger? Why is it fun
to be out of control when the stakes are low?
Oh, my girl and I know, we know what it’s like
when the stakes are high. No wonder
we laugh as we slide at the pace of a stroll.
We know what it’s like to be out of control.
We know. I hold her by the waist as we barely move.
And part of me longs for speed. And part of me
is grateful to move in a way that lets me hold her
a little bit, even just a few seconds, longer.
That Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged challenge, snow, storm, winter on February 21, 2023| 11 Comments »
It was like driving through a winter storm
for years, day after week after month
after night after morning of white-knuckled,
stiff-shouldered worry. No tracks to follow,
no sign of a centerline, no rails on the edge,
and where are the snowplows, and what
good is a map when you can’t read the signs?
There were whole months of white out, driving snow-blind
and slow, whole seasons of running the wipers on high
in an attempt to see just one inch further.
It was icy roads, skidding with the baby in back.
It was wishing I could ask someone else
to take the wheel. It was frozen-slick and slippery
with no studded snows. It was sliding with no brakes.
It was what I woke to everyday
and what I dreamed at night.
If there was beauty, I was too afraid to see it.
I wish I could tell you I was brave.
It was slow to change,
like a spring that arrives only to leave again.
One day the drifts were gone and the roads
were dry and the sky was wide blue and clear.
But it wasn’t like snow, was it?
Some things don’t just melt away.
Some storms transform the landscape forever.
Some storms transform the driver.
One Unmappable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, paradox, snow, stubborn praise on October 27, 2022| 6 Comments »
in the cemetery
new snow—
why does it bring me joy
to see it,
this thin foot path to you
After the First Snow Storm
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, belief, control, snow, understanding on October 24, 2022| 5 Comments »
Just when I believed
autumn would last forever
it didn’t.
Not that I really thought
the gold leaves would stay.
Not that I really believed
the warm days were endless—
but part of me wanted them to be.
And so this cold morning,
driving on ice
when I feel the slip of the wheels
as they lose traction,
the heart resonates
with the skid.
Oh, this lesson
in losing control.
Oh, this remembering
how quickly it all slides by—
the light, the warmth,
the deepening gold,
even this fleeting understanding
of how quickly
it all slides by.
Clean Slate
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, language, snow, weather on January 29, 2021| 2 Comments »
It’s almost always sunny just before
it snows—just before the sky turns grey
then meets the earth in giant swaths
of blue turned clouds turned snow turned drift,
and haven’t you sometimes wanted
to do that, too—to shift in an instant
from warm to cool, from blue to gray,
to know yourself as the opposite
of what you are, just as a day does,
an entirely new syntax unspooling
in swirling verbs and whirling predicates
so complex you forget who the subject is—
haven’t you wanted to flurry, to blizzard,
to white out until there were no tracks
like sentences left for you to follow?