One Remove

Dec 31 2017

So cold

sound carries through the densely settled air

with cat-like acuity.

And in the stillness

I swear I can hear the mice

in their dim subnivean city,

a scurry

of naked pink feet

under dry crystalline snow,

the rustle of dead grass.

And when they stop, the sound of silence

huddling for warmth.

One often feels small in nature.

But looking up

on a moonless night

under cloudless sky

through rarefied arctic air

        –   as black as space

   and cleansed of all impurity   –

I am insignificant,

a tiny speck

on a minor planet

beneath the vast sweep of the cosmos.

And the insistent cold

penetrating seams, congealing flesh

is a sobering reminder

we are but one remove from death,

a single false step

one inattentive stumble.

In an unforgiving climate

where existence cuts close to the bone

the conceit of self-importance ebbs

mortality brooks no denial.

I feel more invisible than usual

but like feeling small,

trudging through the woods

under the vast expanse of night.

Where the only sounds

are the steady squeak-squeak-squeak

of snow underfoot

and my flash-frozen breath;

eye-lids, freezing shut

beard white with frost.

A bit of precious heat

lost with every step.

Really, what can one say about freezing cold that hasn't been said before? And how to say it that makes someone want to read? And anyway, who could possibly be asking for one more tiresome “weather” poem? ...Yet it's hard not to write about the weather when it's this cold for this long.

I like the way the poem looks down, and then up; focuses in on the small, then abruptly expands to take in the universe. There is actually a full moon, and it's breathtakingly beautiful. But I preferred the confluence of a clear black sky with that cold dense air cleansed of impurities: the perfect conditions to see beyond the warm blanket of atmosphere that restricts our gaze to small and inward.

In the end, I think the writer becomes as insignificant as that mouse. Which is a nice call-back (and made even clearer when the warren of nests and tunnels under the ice is referred to as a city), and gives the poem a sense of completion. (The appeal to sound similarly runs through the poem, and gives it a sort of coherence.) But mostly, I wanted to convey a feeling of peril and marginality: where existence cuts close to the bone, and where mortality brooks no denial.

(And yes, I always do feel invisible. In that parlour game of which super-power you'd rather have – the power of flight, or being invisible – all I can do is ruefully laugh. Because I am already the master of invisibility: of all things, what kind of super-power is that?!! ...and who wouldn't rather fly?)