would you, on the year's longest nights,
count and recount mistakes
like a celebrity's indiscretions--your own
or someone else's?   would you think
that the twinge of love that followed
your thoughts was nothing but the shred
of a no-longer-valid persona?

as it turns out, nothing is that simple when
things are deep.  but the mind can
think eventually that it has vanquished the heart--
although eventually, the body will tell it otherwise.
now it is truly winter, the season of the only true promises.

the expansive cruelty of flowers is gone.
it's an adventure to walk this trail, novel in its own way,
irregular and assessing me in the past imperfect,
no longer an event specific to itself.

there must be something about the work in progress
that will redeem me this time, me, this classical figure
struggling halfway up a mountain.  only i , out of the two of us,
can still be foolish enough to search the vanishing snow
beneath my feet for our footprints

as if the wind could choose
what to preserve,
what to blow away