In the Bone-Cracking Cold

By M. Bartley Seigel

On this cross-quarter day, quick to temper and cool,
your long lashes startle me with their rime of hoarfrost,

and I am snared like a rabbit pulled into your gravity
by the run of our long love affair together. The seasons race past,

one following another, and the rising sap is soon to halo the maples again.
I will happily freeze in the bone-cracking cold, just to watch you

walk slowly through this sugarbush, rare as a sundog
incandescent in a fog of softly falling snow.