Winter Waking

The sheet sloughs off your back,
But you, beneath the whorling dark of late
December snowfall, sleep toward spring. Till then,
I watch you hold the night, and wait
For dawn to break, an icicle to crack,
And kindle back the mallard and the wren.

For now, before you wake,
And while your hair falls hushed upon my arm,
This moment is the typhoon’s eye of wonder,
The pressured stillness of a farm
Sealed in a paperweight. Until we break
This poise, and tremble on the lip of thunder,

We hold a peace as deep
As diamonds keep beneath the weight of coal,
And as I have found in attics, drawing out
A great-grandfather’s fishing pole,
Within which, locked like wings in amber, sleep
The antique trickings of the trout.