Through this most difficult country, this world we had known
As a cross-grained hummocky bog-strewn jumble of brambles
Stretching through summer,
We find after blizzard and sunlight, traveling in the winter,
A rolling parkland under our snowshoes
Where every color
Has drifted out of our shadows into a brittle whiteness.
And so we begin shuffling our way forward
Above the invisible
Deadfalls and pitfallen brush, above the deeply buried
Landmarks and blazes we had found misleading,
Above the distraction
Of flowers and sweet berries and birdsongs that held us
Back, breathing and tasting, sitting, listening.
Now we are hurrying
With the smooth swift scuttling of webs, our feet not touching
The earth, our breath congealing, our ears hearing
More than we can believe in
In the denser air: disembodied by the cold, the shouting,
Shouting from miles away, the slamming of gunfire,
The ghost of axes.
But, by tonight, we must learn the serious art of sleeping,
Of lying down, not going on nerve alone
To court exhaustion
Which, here in the deep snow, is another name for forever.
We will make fire, then turn in each other’s arms,
Embracing once more
All we have brought this far in our rawhided fiber,
By rock, by river, by ourselves under the branches
Of this living fir tree
Where, unlike us, the grouse may perch through a whole winter.
And then the cold-spelled morning will make us stare
Into each other’s eyes
For the first signs of whiteness, stare at the ends of fingers,
Then into the distance where the whitening 
Marks the beginning
Of the place we were always looking for: so full of light,
So full of flying light, it is all feathers
Which we must wear
As we had dreamed we would, not putting frostbitten hands
Into the freshly slaughtered breast of birds
But snowblindly reaching
Into this dazzling whiteout, finding where we began,
Not naming the wonder yet but remembering
The simply amazing
World of our first selves where believing is once more seeing
The cold speech of the earth in the colder air
And knowing it by heart.