The Weight of Winter

2.10.24

(a narrative poem.)

Birds must have flown south for the winter. Or wherever the *** it is birds go when the wind and the cold ransack the homes they had nested within the now barren branches.

The trees look broken—almost. I didn’t even notice their orange and yellow leaves had vanquished until the rain started pouring. Now, I see the skeletons for what they are. Tall, skinny, jagged brown things. Fraying at the tips, splitting at the edges. What is a tree without its leaves? Sure, Spring will come, and their verdant splendor will be radiant and glorious once again. But for now, all I see, is gray. And brown. And black.

I see how their trunks bend, twist up, their roots manipulating their velocity, their ascent into the air. Not quite linear, is it? The way trees grow. The way they reach outwards. Or are they even reaching, or just merely leaning. And if it’s the latter, where shall they rest? They stand until they are cut down, and if they are not, unless ravaged by war or by nature’s fire, they will keep standing. Time’s struck some funny deal with them. They will grow their spuds again. They will be glorious again. And maybe I can be that too. One day. Again.

But for now, I am these broken winter trees. Dry and cracking at the edges. Leaning, reaching for what, I don’t know. Air, I suppose. Light.

While I wait for my green leaves to grow, to wrap my shrunken branches in the coil of their waxy warmth, for the sun to shine upon me again and gently coax the seedlings from my skin.

While I wait.

Do I just wait? And if so,

How?