Underneath the snow I know
the living lie in wait
content to doze through short days.
Like the marmot,
a hibernation champion who passes
six, sometimes seven, solid months asleep
before popping out into the late spring sun.
Some even freeze themselves,
like the wood frog
whose brumation keeps its soft insides
from surrendering to the ordered world of ice crystals
while its skin grows solid as stone
under a thin blanket of fallen leaves.
Winter is a world unknown to them,
a blur, a blank space on the calendar
erased from existence.
I envy them on this glacial day,
when numbers with negatives push me in as I go out.
I want to surrender, wait out the winter underground
While the earth turns and turns without me.
Pause, that’s all I want, perhaps not as long as the marmot,
and maybe not as completely as the wood frog,
scarily suspended in a near-death state.
Maybe more like the bear, who slows it all down
to a dark dreamy slumber,
able to rouse if something exciting happens
otherwise, snoozing through
until the sweet scent of rain shudders me awake.
In truth, though,
I am the magpie,
bound when the other birds have gone
to warmer places with longer days
beach walks or red rocks.
Instead, I puff out my feathers,
scrounge for bits of this and that and sing
to the bright winter sun
my always friend.
