In the ice chest of her air
I write a letter to my other home,
my breath cloud.
Sun tips the very tops of trees,
roots reaching for sky
waving in the icy-fingered wind.
Below, the day is leaving,
and birds that seem only black hurry
somewhere warmer perhaps,
flecks of rushing, and the lake
as a rippling body of silver shades
travels without freezing in its direction
to the cove, the creek, the pasture,
the forest, or the rest of the earth.