by John Walser

 

People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.
~ Chekhov

 

Oh, Anton, the draughts
yowl right now:
February Vincent Street:
probably like Petersburg:
almost the steppe:
but without the wolves
that chase
the troika flicker lights
across the ice and snow.

Tonight I will sit
with the woman I love:
dinner, maybe some wine
we get out of our basement:
cellar cold:

and we will adjust
the thermostat all night:
the slow dry heat
that tries to seep
the slightest hope.

Under covers we will hold
each other: the steam
of bodies glowing with happiness:
but we will know it’s winter:

that belligerence of bitter air
that dropped from the boundary waters:

the hunched profanity
when we walk closed space to closed space:

the below zero windchill morning
when we carry the raw under our skin
sewn into the lining of who we are.

We take up that burden.

We will wake tomorrow morning
happy still
but cursing the snow blow
cursing the shovel and the plow
cursing the layers upon layers
upon layers I wear outside
even just to walk beside her car
as she down the driveway backs
to head to Wednesday work.

In love we still ask:
How long the frozen hands and toes?
How long the only bird shadows
the crows covering swaths of yard?
How long the agitation wind?
How long the gust thrash throb pine trees
like nervous uncertainty?

 

 

 

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John Walser’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Spillway, Water-Stone Review, Plume, Posit, and december magazine. His manuscript Edgewood Orchard Galleries has been a finalist for the Autumn House Press Prize, the Ballard Spahr Prize and the Zone 3 Press Prize as well as a semifinalist for the Philip Levine Prize and the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award. A four-time semifinalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize, as well as a Best New Poets, a Pushcart and a Best of the Net nominee, John is a professor of English at Marian University and lives in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, with his wife, Julie. John is on @JohnWalser5.