At first, there is a great pain
After which you grow tired.
Then, they say you feel warm,
One last time, before you go numb.

You walk anticipating a single pine
To separate the horizon into left and right.
But the field is empty, too flat to even have a past,
Not the way a sheet hints at the night all day.
Because foxes can compass home by instinct,
You scan the snow for a faint set of tracks

To lead you where holes can be dug
And precious things laid gently down,
Covered handful at a time, the pebbles removed
From the dirt and put aside out of a respect

For our need to stall, our need to concentrate
Ourselves in the sensation of our fingertips;
Besides the intolerable world of emotions,
We have the world of stones which we can depend upon
To whiten the knuckles whenever pinched hard enough.

Where you stand, nothing touches except your feet and the snow.
In the distance, the ground touches the sky.
But the line stitching together the solid and the infinite
Recedes like tomorrow

As your fingers slowly cease to know
The inside of your pocket
From the side of your coat without the help of your eyes.
They aren’t much better, mistaking the falling flakes for a shredded message.

The field grows wider and whiter like a blade in the night.
You dream of the edge and, partly from cold, shiver.
Partly from the terror of finding your own tracks
Again and again in the snow, as if you have been talking to yourself
For days without realizing you are alone.

Terror like that is too violent for the mind;
It grips the legs and arms and shakes them
Like a dog shaking four dead birds just to be sure
They will not lift off again into the vanishing flock.

Your shoulders and the tops of your feet burn
Like the conclusion of a day spent skipping stones in sparkling ocean,
Like the pot of water intended for two cups of tea that is dropped
And rushes across the floor and beneath the table to your toes.

The moon throws off the clouds and lights up the field.
Once more everything is absolute
As in the first moment of shared nakedness
When skin is just a layer of sensation and there is no difference
Between sets of knees, no such thing as touching.

It does not appear as dramatic as death often does.
No blade reaches in and pulls out a ribbon of blood.
Your own pulse does not, unable to stop, drain your veins,
Until the heart’s great mouth has said all it can say
And, empty, shuts.

It is not like this. The wind blows. You find yourself floating face up,
In a sea of white caps with a breath that sounds familiar
Filling the small well of your ear, my love my love.
You pinch out tears with your eyelids,
The mouth full of a solid, red, unpronounceable word.