On This Blue Earth

Here is a sestina I wrote in honor of the Winter of 2006-07 

On This Blue Earth

The snow is in cahoots with wind and ice,
composing songs for dances danced in silver cold
by maples, elms, brittle bee balm, clematis frozen,
involuntarily gamboling in white whirligig arrays
just before the sun reflects, declines, as if influenced by the weight of frost
spit out of wintry engines exhaling grey.

I will shovel, exfoliate the sidewalk making mounds, grey
piles of slush, audibly muttering "let's make a deal" to stubborn sheets of ice.
Maintenance of things, this house, the yard, the infinite frost
has helped me mark time, remember getting old, made life cold
in this annual subzero charade where winter pounds my life into sad arrays
of equations, systems of questions daring to be thawed, solved, re-frozen.

Each scrape of ice and snow and soot is frozen
and suspended in time as the day turns grey,
as waxwings sing songs and fly in arrays
against dishwater horizons and ice.
Deciphering these things is a job for cold,
blue-earth souls locked in offices of frost.

Today the Snow King sings songs cached in frost-
covered castles with signatures frozen
in three-four rime celebrating the cold
in carnivals and kettle corn turned grey.
There is no need for golden birds in ice.
There is no need for such feathered arrays.

Guilt washes over me for cursing this cold
Minnesota day, fixed in odd arrays:
ten thousand lakes, dead mosquitoes and grey
wolves traveling in packs in firs of frost
on Gully and Tenstrike tundra frozen,
hunting, howling across Tiger Lake ice.

In the cold, grey distance, arrays of frost-
faced lakes crack like secret puzzles frozen,
until spring solves all equations of ice.

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