Across my social media, I see clips of weather radar,
the current temperature, decreasing
the wind chill,
negative
.
Everyone
in beanies, with scarves
meeting in the middle
so only their eyebrows peek out,
the one patch of fur
growing from our red, raw skin, and
does Minnesota think man
tries to dupe her with synthetic
wolf coats and bear hats
?
I wonder
if she is a little like you,
humoring herself in her unpredictability,
in man’s annual exclamations of “Why do I live here??”
Just when we think we’ve
figured you out,
you send the first snowstorm and we’ve all forgotten
how to drive.
Are we so arrogant,
these synthetic-fur-wearing-warm-blooded settlers,
that we jump our batteries
and flex our four-wheel-drives
in recognition of our superpower,
busyness
?
I wonder
if you long to be noticed
in the way
I walk out the door
and my breath momentarily
fogs the lenses over my eyes.
In the way
the snow lies naked and white,
a mercy-covering for fallow ground,
majestic in its glittering beauty
and quiet in its boast.
In the way
the sun shines brightest, clearest
the colder the temperature
falls.
In the way
you are sovereign over every degree
and send a bitter wind to see
if we will stop
.
And pay attention to the truth:
that your beauty
is revealed in adversity,
that you are never
in a hurry
,
that you long to quell
every fear and anxiety–
which will surface in the slowness–
with a mercy-covering like snow,
and
that you give us this day our daily bread,
the aboriginal rest
our bred-in-captivity lies can never slice
or deliver.