The little eye is pointed at the sky illegible.
I am clouds and my thoughts are snow
passing across an astronomical clock.
It’s been cold for days and I can’t keep warm,
so I wrap myself in colorful scarves, purples and pinks
like a Klimt painting, and lean into you as you lie asleep
in the seat next to me. When I was much younger,
a girl I loved told me I was impressionable,
in a bad way. Back then everything was Shakespeare
and sonnets and she was Hermia in the high school play.
On occasion, I still recite out, out brief candle,
and evoke those old mournful feelings
that everything is weird and wayward
and full of sad turnings. My current resolution
is resisting the required optimism
of putting exclamation points in emails.
Have you noticed how judging is as easy as falling snow?
I once was a youngling rose cut back for winter,
cut for another’s pleasure. I still retain the smell
of what remained. Memories must be watered
like potted flowers and kept out of cold windows.
I have lost good friends who were witnesses to my past,
and I theirs. I am snow melting as soon as it touches something.
In the 1971 film version of Macbeth, his body tumbles
down steps, legs over neck, to join his crownèd head.
Haydn’s head was separated from his warm body
so someone could search for where the music comes from.
I hear bits of a tune arriving in a fit of winds
but it does not reach us. My head is swallowed whole
by the circumference of things I cannot reach.
And, like me, hasn’t the sky its doubts?
In winter, with snow in its face and eyelashes,
doesn’t it fret at the thought of never seeing its way
clear again? I am alone on the platform
and all the trains are gone. I am the cavernous
station. I am the full echo of others’ voices
returning in mumbled music and written down.
A poem is invented to hold what’s left to hide.
It is written for others to pry up and hold to the light
in the quiet triumph of a moment. You stir.
Your hair has never been so long or so soft.
In books and films, I am always alert
for the tender address, the soft pleading,
the thing said from love or despair,
like Katharine’s poem at the end of The English Patient.
In the desert cave with her broken bones unset
and her belovèd gone for help, she writes in dying light,
my darling, I’m waiting for you. The fire is gone now
and I’m terribly cold. We die. We die rich
with lovers, bodies we have entered and swum up
like rivers. I want all of this marked on my body.
I know you’ll come carry me out into the palace of winds.
But he could not, not while she still lived.
Which made me cry and cry in an airplane bathroom.
What is unbearable forever rests on my chest
while dreams pool in the salt cellar of your neck.
I know you miss your father every single day
and that he visits you when you sleep.
I’m wounded by eyes. I look at your mouth
when you speak. What is intolerable
surrounds without insisting
as lilies bow their imperious crowns
and words gather on white paper.
This étude made of snow is meant for you to play.
Wake, my darling, and help me map the distance
between my desire to understand
and what time I have left to love you.
Austin M. Reece, Ph.D., is a poet and educator living in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife, Rebecca. As Director of Survivor Empowerment at LOTUS Legal Clinic in Milwaukee (lotuslegal.org), he leads trauma-informed, humanities-based poetry workshops for survivors of sexual violence and human trafficking. He can be reached at Austin@LotusLegalClinic.org.