Cold

My shivering spends the last energy I have
to forage a cup of hot chocolate.
Then again, there is the cover on the couch—
the blanket I left rumpled last night in my
desperation for comfort.
I am now lost between purpose,
time and timelessness.

This cold. It comes in waves.
Like the ebb and flow of glaciers,
swinging through the seasons of loss and gain
And yet, each year a little more is lost.

When we speak of acres of ice it means nothing.
When we speak of islands the size of Manhattan
or the state of Connecticut

then my shivering becomes the main event.
There is no solace anymore.
No island in these tropics of denial.
No longer any blast furnace that can warm me.

The arc of my life descends, the edges
fraying now like an old sweater.
I drop to my knees in a non-aggression
pact with the glaciers, to let myself flow with
the continents of ice, the eons of frozen awe.

Elsewhere, the lives of the natural world
still unfold without remorse, without reflection,
shedding no blood for the past.
The integrity. The harmony of the present

brings me to my senses.
The savannah will be my home
–in the next life–
where I will hunt or graze,
water or preen, live or die
with nothing more to say.

 
©gary horvitz, 2017