winter mittens

copper beech
in winter
greeley park
nashua, nh

winter mittens

How strange it all was . . . The world’s raffle

                                               

                                                                Charles Simic

                                                                Shelley

It’s enough seeing it as just

snow falling or fallen it’s enough

coming out to it on its own

terms with feet in shoes

who’ve seen this much snow

and mittens that in the end will

be wring-out wet and smelling

as I imagine sheep

might through nights and nights

of such another snow

that meeting like this is like

old friends in the end

zealously separated, shorn

to the floor in a lean-to and

heaved and gotten all the way

through to spun and maybe

hand-knit maybe machine

but who's caring drawing them on

before the door’s flung

before the handle of the shovel’s

taken up, before the back

and knees bend in

their monastic diligence: one

scoop: one scoop: one

scoop, the terms still

coming down from the sky

to settle it all as friends

as on still and huddled ewes

or their cast-off future

here in the palm (and more!)

of my hand.