In shirt sleeves I stepped from my door
to find the morning paper.
The shiver of frost washed sleep
from my face.
Shards of chime played in the air.
Immaculate sound like a galaxy of bells.
I stared, feeling the clarity of the cold,
the enthrallment of new snow.
The ashes of the sky sparkling with ice.
I belonged outside, away from survival.
I was not interested in news,
the hot coffee inside,
the melancholy darkness of my house.
I was wild with an innate clarity
inside me.
Challenged by the arctic wind.
As if I had been wakened twice.
Once to an escarpment of walls,
the civilized barriers of a plain
ordinary life,
when the true knowledge of the winter
with its harsh ferocity,
implored me to return
to the wild place it had for me.
What was I to do?
In my bare feet.
In my numbing limbs
that impulsively stepped
off the porch,
into the snow, a few feet,
before darting back.
And inside the door
I threw the paper down
and sat with my thoughts
with new vitality, and
a dangerous wonderful intention.
Tomorrow I would go a little further
into another place,
day by day,
until I was wild again
in love with the universe.