Winter Hymn

                             December 2024

There is usually a wave-gnashed sea & someone lost 
in it, or a tree hewn down for a cross

& a stone rolled away from a tomb, the hymn holding 
both storm & balm,

but here the lake is a calm leaden gleam, long seams 
of ice soldering its edge

to a frozen shore. The sky is white & the tree trunks 
are white or black. It’s bleak,

but each bare branch is etched with exquisite precision 
against the low light, & boulders

look soft as sofa pillows, all hummocked with snow.
In the late afternoon sun

every dead-stick thicket glows inward gold & cattails 
are fleshed out in rich chestnut.

There are orange berries in bunches & bloodred dogwood 
wands, & these colors burn.

When the wind moans at night, I’m not afraid, but I know 
I should be afraid. This morning a wolf

loped across the road right in front of our truck as if there 
were no rules—nothing sacred—left in the world

& we saw trucks & men at the new mine. It lies upstream 
of our cabin & if you live in America, also lies

upstream of you. Our neighbors have fought it for years. 
They will fight again & we will help them.

When the wolves howl at dusk, I will try to feel joy, 
recalling how in my lifetime they were almost extinct,

but then they came back. In these cold, dark dawns the sun 
still comes to kneel at the horizon, undertaking

its slow, patient kindling of light, but sometimes 
it seethes there all day, unable to rise.

The night sky looks the same, its pale, cold clouded eye 
floating in vitreous darkness,

or no moon & drifts of stars, or flurries of flakes 
sieved like sugar through iron air.

Our friends keep posting photos of the northern lights, 
veils of pink, purple, & green shimmering

—the Ojibwe say singing—the sky east to west. 
We haven’t seen them yet,

but we’ve signed up for the alerts & shiver outside 
at night looking for them—

sometimes alone, sometimes standing with others—
eyes on our glowing phones.

Read more from Issue 23.1.