Snow keeps us in a rented cabin
far from home. After a long silence,
you stand in the doorway
watching the drifting snow.
I remember the small cabin where
we spent our first winter together
and the night we made love on the deck
of ferry passing through the Narrows.
How quickly it can seem that life
is only a worn and folded map:
Here’s the long sadness of being childless
and the friend who almost hollowed out
our hearts, the argument
we thought would never end, then
I remember the small channel of
open water in the stream
we found in the woods last winter,
how it still flowed even
though the distant bay was frozen.
We stood silent, our twinned breath
restrained, listening to its muted
song, and here’s the silver flute
it played for us.
