Winter Quarantine

I exhale and imagine

my breath scattering the snow

that has been falling

outside my window, steadily,

since morning.

*

It is bad travel weather,

though that doesn’t matter.

For ten months of quarantine,

there has been nowhere

safe to go. So that I’ve stopped

even trying to move.

*

I exhale and imagine

if we could see a coronavirus float

and flurry, land

on an outstretched hand

or tongue like a snowflake.

The models of the virus

online look like that.

*

I imagine if

we could always

see our breath,

the way we do

when it’s frozen,

charging out ahead

and burning back in.

*

Imagine.

*

I am used to the feel of breath,

now, when it’s trapped,

wet, in a cotton face mask.

I used to breathe

without paying such attention.

*

If…

*

I have always been restless

in winter. But I didn’t used to

have to remind myself every day

to take such deep breaths. To count

living and breathing as a success

for the day.

Glitter Frost

After a fifty degree day in Michigan February,

(The groundhog said it must be spring.)

it dips back into the familiar freezing,

and all the leaves uncovered from snow

start the morning sparkling.

Finally, Mid-January

There’s a burst of wind,
maybe a laughter of it,
and the light tickle of snow
we’ve watched these months,
expecting white, finally
becomes a full window snow:
every bit from the ground, the eaves,
the unpruned bush with a few dry leaves
lifted at once.