the balcony has fallen asleep
under snow, tired of a small world
that is so big, there is no understanding it.
a poet once said that spring has rotted--
that it has become a frozen heap of compost
buried under winter.

the wind chime is stiff and still. music has
drifted away like light snow on a small wind.
i do not understand how other people love--
fickle as an early spring night--
whereas my love has all the inexorability
of winter.  i know that somewhere,
underneath the silent snow,

there are" leaping fish and flying birds"
and silence tiptoeing along a sleeping balcony.
but if you listen with all your late nights, you can hear
love dying young everywhere
for reasons winter cannot fathom.
like an inland child's first glimpse of the ocean:

it's too much.

i don't understand.