Exposure
Dec 14 2010


The shortest day of the year.
When a month of winter
is enough, already.
I console myself
that soon, the darkness will begin lifting.
Imperceptibly, at first,
until the shadows shorten
and I feel myself emerge
into light.

But the season is indifferent
to sun,
and I can count on 3 more months
of blizzards
arctic fronts.

The lake is locked in ice,
an immaculate field of white.
A tabula rasa
waiting to receive my footprints.
Where a machine would make a perfect path
mine seem to stagger across its surface.
Bundled up, so just my eyes appear
I walk erratically;
drunk on life, perhaps,
or simply lost
in thought.

Shadows are sharp enough to cut.
The sky, a high blue bowl
inverted.
There are rabbit tracks
a lone wolf’s massive paws.
But I haven’t seen a deer since fall.
When the bucks were in rut,
flanks steaming, nostrils flared
tossing their noble heads.
When they’d emerge on the back-country roads
hungry for salt.
Now, for months, they make themselves scarce,
hunkered down, burning fat
easy prey.

A wolf, without its pack
might starve, as well.
Because we are all the same
when exposed skin freezes in seconds.
A solitary man
walking into the wind,
squinting in blinding brightness.