A prediction

Some days are pure snowfall.
A clean, hollow-seeming landscape.

Some days seem as afraid as I am

to pass through town,
to look around as if holding flowers,

as if waiting for someone
lovely.

The sadness of most days
is the sadness of never having strung my wash 

on a line, holding fabrics
up near my face as if trying to catch

air,

as if trying to impose forms
onto the light that would fall into them

gratefully, as if finally able 
to rest.

"There are so few opportunities 
to spread my arms,"

the light says.

Every night a skin of ice
covers the stream banks,

broken then
melted

by morning light.  Once free 
the water runs toward the woods, 

carrying the light's genes
in.

Walking through some of the oldest sounds on earth
I remember so little of what was real

for the sake of remembering 
this.

I make a prediction.
The lake converts Fahrenheit

to Celsius by turning opal,
by sliding a broken fish

up the freezing sand
as if making the land

an offer.
The land

refuses.