In the inner ear is what buzzes here. I cannot see, but in the white box is a frozen bee. Clover catches its breath and sap stops in the trees. Hands warm as they numb. Gradually, quietly, momentous forces reduce to minute degrees.
Hope is as elementary as ancient mercury.
Finally, each hum is nothing but a prayer for one, this one. The depth of cold, that bone and tooth of winter, stuns us as the immensity of ice snaps and settles over the jagged river, its current turned into a disorder of edges. Only our senses converge as we stare in silence unable to ask what holds us here with the wind biting our lips, our gloved fingertips, numbing us with something sub-zero, a negative count toward infinity. Last night, the knife points of stars stopped us from walking into the warmth of a room. Instead, we stood shivering as if waiting for the black water-taffeta sky to be slit open, for the silver light to pour out, kindle its color, and release us from so much space, from the vast chill of separation, the force of isolation.