During a cold spell, the people depart

Like ghosts. No one outside. No more bullshit.

No barking neighbors or beggars’ ballet.

A frozen football. A paralyzed cart.

Free of traffic, the town blinks through torrents

Of glare. You’d shout for joy, but a mile

Gives your feelings the boot, as on you ramble,

Past the grade school, the mill, and the chain restaurants.

Your breath curls like steam and the air’s made

Pure. And that insurrection of a chill

That pierces every layer? It doesn’t thrill

Like nerves or the defenses of the blood,

But as if the raw unsullied slope stretched

Its length to guard the purpose it concealed.

Yours are the only footprints in the field,

A spirit-scrawl that lights out to the west.

A half-moon cuts through iridescent spume.

A locomotive threads the realm it reaches.

To navigate the dead and silent beaches

Of quartz and bone, observe the rule of time.

Like pearl too dangerous for the diver’s mark,

Too deep for brain to sound or luck to hold,

The light ascends through vistas that unfold

Real angels and imaginary dark.

But angels will not breathe your mortal weather,

Or leave to chance the things to which they tend.

Imagination stumbles at the end:

The cold, the dead cold, gathers us together.