We clench and unclench our minds as we do our
hands from tromping through the frost, the skin under

our nails tinted blue like the spruce that plays
sentinel around the house it dwarfs. My words fly

in formation, wing-bones creaking aloft, but you
leave off moving with the burgundy of their

plumes: you will not concede, home toward a kinder
clime. Cold seeps into the spaces between our

bones, burrows deep where umbrage has carved a
gulf. Ready yourself for the drifts. Sudden snows will

cover over the blitheness of our looks, white-blind to
the colors that tie us, pillowing our earth in another night.