Sizzle the Stillness

For less than a handful of heartbeats, magenta-orange rises and arcs over the forever white and deep. Like a dream. Like a whisper of a story.

Before gray settles into its day-long rest, sunrise creeps through white pines and spruce and fir to sizzle the stillness of dawn. Kora makes quick work of canvassing the backyard; the rabbits have been busy overnight making dozens of intersections and pit stops. Even with her light frame, her paws squeak in the snow. Another polar vortex is on its way but I try not to think about it too much. Instead I buy potted daffodil and hyacinth to strategically place around my psyche. Celebrating what ultimately must unfold is one way looking at it. And I am looking at it, love. This bipolar dance of study and turning away is tempered by the embrace of awareness. But listen, the music is always playing for me. “Tell me something, boy . . .”

The greenhouse work is consuming. We are shorthanded this year so the hustle keeps our pace under pressure. But I like my dirt tan. My body likes some of the work but not all. At night after my shower, I ice, stretch and dream about massages. My fingers are thickening with muscle and scrapes because of the work. My wedding ring chokes my finger so it's time to it take off for a season.

Brokeback Mountain, A Handbook for Creative Protest, Dickinson. Winter, greenhouses, gin. A white rose, gentle and thorny. We are always growing a garden; who walks through is up to them.