winter retreat (unedited)

awake hours before dawn
and deep in to the night

the low sun passes over the snow
and every day the wind rearranges the drifts

covering my footprints in the field
while I sit on my cushion, wrapped in blankets and breathe

owls hooting outside my window
which I have opened, despite the cold

just to get a little more crisp air--
when you have time to smell it for hours

you realize just how starving you are
for every breath

I got lost in the snow, once
dazzled by the beauty of a hemlock tree

it was so, so quiet
and so in the quiet I tried an experiment --

what if you only had one more day to live?
it turns out,

that in the face of an imagined death
(less wrenching than the real thing, but still, I made an effort)

I love the blazing sweetness of sunlight
and the warmth of a lovely thought

and every breath turns out to be so overwhelmingly...
...wanted

it made me realize that when I convince myself that
our lives are too complex,

our existence too manufactured and removed from nature,
our purposes impossible to believe in,

it is just that I have momentarily forgotten
that everything in this world was made

to help people be juuuust that much more comfortable
so that they might be juuuust that much more joyful

oh, and we do get it wrong
but it's just so quaint and lovable

that we try at all --
it cures me