Frost Valley

Discovery! In the backyard, as the sun slips down the lip of earth, my shovel hits something like stone. It is not stone. I cry aloud and you come running, What is it What is it? I put my hands into the dirt and from it pull what will take our whole lives to recognize.

*

In the hallway, in the slanted rays of sun and sparkling glass everywheres, you hand me a word. What shall we do with it? you ask. I regard the word, then, through the windows, the tall world. You are standing too close, like you were running from a dream. Is it a dream? The word in my hand feels unreal, and all morning a breathlessness has risen like steam off the fields. Please name it for me, you say, Please say you will. I say, Yes.

*

Yes to the blue sky, to the brown deck. To the persistent clouds, the leaves of trees, yes to the ocean stirring behind the leaves. Yes to the fingers, the eyes, the hands for grabbing and giving; yes to the skin and yes to the air. Yes to my mother, who is too thin, and yes to my father, who would be king. Yes to ambitions and yes to failures. Yes to the car, the exhaust, the road. Yes to the power, the politics, the flash of the knife in the dark. To the lost, the compass, the glass everwhere; yes to the snow that falls around us a different January, turning everything to unbroken light.

*

Orienteering: you write: you hold the compass close until you find direction that reveals what you must know; that sometimes we must learn to fall behind before we understand how we can go.

I watch over your shoulder. The gathering darkness is a promise outside it intends to keep.

*

Our manuscript is published. Now everyone knows what ever happened to love. I take to side streets, call taxis in advance, change my wardrobe. You don't answer the phone. No one remembers what the soul is, no one even owns a shovel. At home mounds of dirt are piling up, mountains in the bedroom.

*

January: we walked two hundred miles in the snow. I said yes to the sparkle, yes to our breath turned crystal, yes to the absent sky. You held the compass in your hand. When it happened, there was no sound or song or changing of light. We went on like we always do, whether or not the world discovered what we are, whether or not it said yes.



-amr--