Frozen grass, like the surface of a dead moon, stretches out across the field.
There’s still time before the planet dies white
But nothing can be planted
And nothing can be reaped
By standing in the groundswell of summer, with the heaves and hills
Left by tractors and time
Or in the sheltered berm
Where all the leaves are braced.
You’ve walked here before, you know every knoll and knot
All the twists you’ve wound around;
Where you landed first,
Where you fell.
And each rutted footstep marks where you used to stand
But you don’t quite fit now
In this unforgiving landscape
In this unyielding shape
Still, there’s a trail; a solid, hardened, toughened path
As proof of life
Like a wrinkle on the face of
Every early morning walk
Oh change, don’t obliterate my world!
And fall across the earth I’ve come to know
Leaving me snow blind and deep, where
Even the fence posts at the edge of space are buried!
Hold fast to gravity all that’s fixed and firm —
Infertile, yes,
But settled and solid
And set in stone!
Untether me from this frozen ground, where all my history traipses,
And I may melt into rivers and rains
And pour across the landscape
In a flood of the unknown.
They tell me spring will come and that others wait to welcome me
But first, you erase it all
and I’m left in the wild white
of change.
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