Letter from the Ice Field, March

It is so cold I cannot feel my body.

When wind sharpens

                    and slides

                    its steel through my ear

a quake shifts inside me

like liquid

                    in the compass

                    I dropped into the sea.

I am afraid to fall that way,

as a weight

                    from a hand

                    into some bottomless

country of water.

Once, I hoped we became

                    more than an aperture.

                    Once God

was my anchor

in the nickering sea.

                    Love was mine

                    in the falling one.

I dream I walk a forest

until I reach, again,

                    the stone house

                    with a moss floor.

A vine of sunlight

grows at its center.

Where you would have been standing.

Where I am parted.