273. It is In

In various and a way
we take heed of
the motions and the way
of the world before
us and the one
that will come after.

It is all unknowable.
It is all irredeemable.

In the balcony of winter
all tendencies are towards
redemption and the breaking
of ice into glass and mirrors.

It is within the strata of night
that we find the reasons
for keeping and not sleeping
the season away. Remember
a sense of darkness as liquid
flowing warm, even on
a cold night and generous
berth for the passage of time.

In our own ways and various,
we ask for the contest of time,
we extend into the future,
uncertain and dim, we become
melodies that swarm memories
out, and it is damp in the world
regarding what we refuse to forget.

It, as if you didn’t know, can be
rigorous to run this life through
and through with thought, and
we are managed and mangled
by the manner a life uses
to challenge us, yet death
is the only reward, yet life
cannot take itself away
from us or replace itself
with anything less than
the challenge of a single day,
starting with dim light,
humming on a horizon we
rarely see or even imagine.

In extreme situations, we recall
that we have no regrets, because
we cannot change anything and
because we know that any change
would also wipe out so much
that we love, that we live for,
that we wait each day to
experience just one time again.

It is the curse of the human
to want more than is possible, to do
more than we can reasonably to,
to suck in more air than we need,
to live at the very edge of our ability,
because only we understand
the possibility of it all.

In winter, though, we slow. Our
bodies are not made for winter.
We are children of the tropics,
even if we’ve never ventured
to that millennial home of ours.
The cold holds us tighter than
warmth or fever and makes us
hold ourselves in so tightly that
we see out of ourselves more clearly,
the world having become
somehow unavoidable, somehow
more perceptible, more real.

It is not to say
that we are damned or damaged
by any of this. We are merely
the beasts of body and brain
that we are, and we live through
them as much as we live through
this tiny blessed life we have
received, to do with it the best
we can, as winter challenges us
to do, and as you always do.