Maddy Robinson 

wintering.

I feel this love as fingers around

a crystal vase. You are more

hollow. Air-conditioned

bone marrow. And antlers.

And there is my heart,

knee-deep, in tracks:

sundown snowdrift crevasse          

                                    you can see from above the Earth

by spaceship. An owl’s nest.

                                                                                       ***

I walk in the tracks of my children. Soft eiderdown magician’s flick saltsparkle. The upside-down night.

I felt you before your arrival; I knew you were there. Like an unseen planet, without spectrometer railways,

tortoise in the grey fingerprint hardened earth.

I walk in the tracks of my children. They spell LOVE.

                                                                                      ***

Peel mother mary, her curtain

sleeves from the matchbox

collars, feverish yellow light

             from a candle in a distant window—

Snowflake vessel. I warm her

love between palms. Feather

in the wintering. Remember;

omen. And her glinting visitor,

bright shining stranger, warmth

that can only be imagined,

ember of home.