IRONIC WINTER MEDITATION #4 Below: THIS COLD (CHAIN OF LAKES)

This Cold (Chain of Lakes)

this shade of silver

like what color is in its pure state

two perfect bare silver trees

a silver lake glassier though than the trees gleaming

a line of oh a thousand such naked trees on the bank yonder

my sixth-grade friend Paul used to say yonder

because he wasn't from Texas but 

I thought he might as well have been from the moon

a full line of slate clouds above

soft blue beyond that like her eyes

a certain gold and glow from the lowering star

yet not the warmer gold of spring or summer or fall
more alchemical and unnecessary

all that's required is to be pale and bleached and empty
and to the east of the fading
source

cold cuts through your silly human cloth
freezing thought snaps

it is really this cold
this is what cold is when it's this cold
a heart can stop

it's done it before
your blood can freeze
it might be even now

there is no one

I mean NO ONE here
but this empty space is echoing with
one perfect cracking or howling sound after another
someone somewhere is safe and warm

listening to a soundfile of winter nature sounds
and thinking he's a very fine fellow for doing so

but I can step out on the ice
above those lovely noises
as the elements move and change and realign
as all things always do
and abandon my abstractions

flinging a fallen limb and then another and then

obviously too many
skipping them out and watching them slide across
the frozen lake

you figure out what to do in this kind of cold
you walk in that little strip of sun
and keep the forty mile wind at your back
not letting yourself think about the moment when
you need to turn and turtle-like withdraw within yourself

then return

a wise buddha

through that same fierce cold loveliness

and you realize you idiot
that this is just another of all the miracles
that cannot be captured in words
or photo or on canvass or anything but itself
for no frame would ever be fair to this

even a 360 panorama would need to  tilt up and down
and even if it did
it couldn't sing that shudder I just heard from the lake
or the sadness and strangeness of all the memories
of swimming this spot with four fine children now gone
or canoeing with Nathan through the chains

into six of the seven lakes

and the blue heron that flew just over our heads when we startled him that day

there is no way to say this place
which is why we need special flannel lined pants like mine
and German hiking boots if possible
and warmer headgear than I'm wearing now
to see and taste and feel and hear and meditate this cold

the only way to say anything worth saying anyway is like Zeno

you go as far as you can probably go and know

that there's still infinity to go

you touch her skin so softly
then again and then again
each time more softly
until the difference
between touching
and not touching
disappears or
at the least
is not now
subject to
senses

"this is what I mean by loveliness

this this this this
this this this
this

s”

on cue the world the sky does its sudden sad fade

the only truth of everydamnthing we know

yet still surprising when where you've stood was silver

so be it
the lake is just gray

the trees dull brown in fact

or facts are not that helpful here

when it's so absurdly cold

you only you and the people where the sun has still not set

who perhaps are part of you but haven't told you yet

know this mystery

the hard cold truth of today

a meaning not propositional or open to debate

her eyes

the bite of the February wind

that sky

the scrubbed skin of earth

all this sharp silver and faded gold
in the dying light
a million leafless empty branches

dancing violently above these

steady trunks

then
the darkness.