The Girl Who Was Winter

 

I don’t understand how a house is built, the piece-by-pieceness of it all.

And why is a hamburger called that–it’s made of beef. Around here

people say “hamburg” and bang their boots together before swinging

their feet into the driver’s seat. Around here the streets are named

after families who still live on them. This I understand. And how quick

it takes a ram to mount a doe—I get it now. The world’s laid out

on the ground and everywhere I step, I step on it. I’m naming

each new season: after winter, white spring. Then mud, then spring,

then storage, then sticks, then logs. Then winter in her new fur coat

lasts long enough to answer everything. She’s the sweet caesura–

not the roadside flare lit as a cry for help, but the help itself.

***

 

 

photo by Misha