Once in the Alps
I reached a building
that lived in perpetual winter.
Above the warm gauze of pastures,
little lakes that spread
like blue cameos.
The Alps are teeth
shattered by glaciers
and dark, forewarning dreams.
In the shelter,
the cold was deaf and numbing.
The sky above the terrace
was heavy.
Why had I come there, I wondered.
I wanted space,
the sea,
the open shelves of the land
where life was lush
and stumbling over itself.
But there I was
in the Alps
as I listened to lessons
I must learn about continuing,
if I were to live,
to be put back to health.
A hospital not unlike
the reaches of those mountains.
Sounds of wind
in the oboe of its ridges,
where I heard
fragments of life reaching,
putting itself together.
A strategy for going
beyond the barrens of catastrophe,
finding a way back to summer,
where I was born.