THE GODS OF WINTER

Storm on storm, snow on drifting snowfall, shifting its shape, flurrying in moonlight, bright and ubiquitous, profligate March squanders its wealth. The world is annihilated and remade with only us as witnesses. Briefest of joys, our life together, this brittle flower twisting toward the light even as it dies, no more permanent for being perfect. Time will melt away triumphant winter, and even your touch prove the unpossessable jewel of ice. And vanish like this unexpected storm drifting there beyond the windows where even the cluttered rooftops now lie soft and luminous like a storybook view of paradise. Why not believe these suave messengers of starlight? Morning will make their brightness blinding, and the noon insist that only legend saves the beautiful. But if the light confides how one still winter must arrive without us, then our eternity is only this white storm, the whisper of your breath, the deities of this quiet night.

-DANA GIOLA