The meteorologists are pleading with us
to keep checking back through the storm,
ice pellets making a carpet two, three inches thick,
this pale beach we walk on, this wind that passed
over the bodies of the lakes and the lakes that
froze it, the arctic sunk deep, meeting our cheeks,
gathering on us, this snake’s rattle of weather,
this sandstorm of ice six inches deep and climbing,
these April showers.
To understand that I am present here,
that I am sensed, that the soil feels me,
that the mourning dove knows my species
better than I know its species,
and with this understanding to start to hear—
Stands of windy birch tracing themselves like fingers
Birch spear wind-dark coniferous
Approaching rain a mouth of flies, of fireflies
The maple an hourglass, the trunk measuring
The trunk the conduit, the neck, the language
Crows in each treetop, parsing