Dear snow

A small conversation in winter

When I walk away from the human world, I can start seeing again. January is cold this year, and silent in the woods; snow, you are with us once again. (Although I worry that you have left your arctic home and drifted too far south to join us. Did all our summer longing, that wistfulness bring you here, our endless wanting to be warm?) In order to survive, we need each other I am told. But now, I just want your covering. I hunch into my coat and wonder what hibernation feels like, its slow safety, retreat from the elements. Who lies under you this winter? I wonder if I could join the ground squirrels, bats and the woodchucks, wake in spring and face the worried world again.

Here the pines are still coated in their crooks and high above. I watch what the winter trees hang on to. At the forest edge, a tiny nest in the arms of the red maple, her wee burgundy buds, a clutch of embroidered beads. Further down the path, dried seed tassels drip off the tips of the box elder like maple samaras; nut-colored, faded in the wind. Some litter your snowy ground. Over the little lake, a tulip poplar splays branches with clusters of her dried fruit that perk upward like tiny crowns. Little brown catkins hang off the sweet birch next door.

What is inside the winter trees, dear snow? You see who comes and goes. I know the great horned owl lives somewhere nearby. I’ve heard him hooting in the dusk calling for a mate. Does the northern flicker nestle in the round hole in that black cherry tree, the hairy and downy woodpecker? I hear them hollering close by some days I walk out here. And the pileated woodpecker, too, the red-bellied one. Can I call them all to come hammer out a home for everyone? Even with the rules of the wild, there would be room here— or we would move to the next river valley, the next small grove or hill. Why can’t we understand this in the human world?

We have forgotten why you come, snow. Your time here is to slow us down, to have us think and store up our strength and resolve while the animal and plant world rests. We have neglected you and the natural world. We have forgotten why we need you, and how we risk losing you altogether. I walk and think of how much we must protect you and all the ground you cover, the birds and animals who live with you, the insects and amphibians and invertebrates who wait for your passage into spring. Our heads are clouded by our needs, our wants, our fears and angers, not what is under our feet. How much time we are wasting, snow.

Snow, you give me a place to go to try to clear my head. It is so scary in our world right now. The ones who say they lead us hunt us down and separate us from each other. Sometimes we don’t know what to do. We’ve left a bad year behind, but you’ve turned to ice too quickly in our nation and the world feels dangerous. I’m following you, snow, and watching all these paw prints, these bird steps in the snow. The animal world knows where to go, so I will keep coming back to watch and track them. I am waiting for the full Snow Moon on February 1 to show us all the way.

Already the shreds of the old year
                          
                                at Saginaw Forest

Hanging in the air
the bald-faced hornet nest,
rags in the crab tree now
while white oak leaves
still left curl into corpses – 
that, a sparrow shadow,
this, an old man’s hand.

In the woods, we hear
a hoot owl call, faintly
over the trees stripped 
bare – and there, shaggy
flags of white-tail deer 
bounding away from us.

Still, the sun glows
over the blue ice
of the farm pond,
a violet arrow
of cloud pointing
toward it, sinking.

While 
aiming home
pale button 
of moon 
like a little oath
just above us.
No matter 
which way
we turn.

PoetTreeTown, January 2024, Ann Arbor Observer

My book, Everybody Wants to Keep the Moon Inside Them will turn a year old April 1. I’ll be reading at Serendipity Books in Chelsea, Michigan with some wonderful Michigan poets on Sunday, March 29 at 5:30. More news about this to follow. It would be great to see some of you there, so local folks, put this in your calendars!

There is also a plan afoot to do a nature workshop with my dear friend, Ashwini Bhasi at Book Suey in Hamtramck, Michigan on Saturday afternoon, April 4 followed by a poetry reading. Specifics available soon!

Please reach out on my website and I can send you a signed copy of my book. I would also love to read in other towns in Michigan and beyond, so please brainstorm with me. Our world needs all the poetry it can manage right now. Stay safe. Be strong. Protect each other. Speak up.