Winter

Once, upon a field of snow,

I stood

hate filling

every pricked hair on my body.

          Dear reader, are you somewhere warm as you read this?

          Are you somewhere safe?

He dragged me from my bed 

into that frozen graveyard,

littered with the brittle corpses of

          grape fern,

          bitterroot,

          arnica,

to stand beside a black-cold creek.

          If you read this 

          in the sunshine,

          you will not understand.

My job was to watch him fish.

My job was to witness his power

over living things

including myself.

My job was to stand quietly

no matter how often 

he raised his rod.

Where I was not hate, I was numb.

Where I was not numb, I was waiting.

For a man cannot hook and shoot and destroy forever,

but the fish will always run.

          It is a mercy of the green spring,

          dear reader,

          that we forget the traumas of winter.

          In your sun-warmed skin,

          you can hardly recall frozen fields and frightened fish.

          Revel, but be not complacent.

          The seasons turn.