Survive Winter

In the land where we all go to die – where the soil under calloused feet meets
bones dried white by sun – where you come with your shadow (a shadow's heat:
the temperature of skin; the temperature of the wolf's tongue that licks the blade,
blood melting ice where the handle froze; the temperature of clay taken too soon
from the kiln) with your baby strapped to a board – where the pale grooved tooth,
the whale tooth carved down palm size, is palmed in sequence of your prayers
—where you stood on the cliffed red crag of ice where even plankton freeze—the
sun blinds when you run, we can't prove the snow will stop.