To Winter

Rebecca Dunham

You are catch-less, you are my abandonment—

 You are my very own sweet crone（老母羊）. 

Timeless slab of ice and raw scrub, you empty me 

            to pitted fruit-stone, a sacrifice 

 To the green, green moon. 

You stiffen, sexless as the whiskered（留胡须的） ditch's roots, 

            the sink-holed lawn, 

            the pruned limbs -- mere stumps. 

You drain the lemon's pulp beneath its bitter rind. 

 You disclose the corded trunk's grizzle. 

Absent desire, you are reduced to offshoot of silver 

            maple, its thrust from 

the throat's barked lock. 

 Stasis: this flame unfanned. A fallow wake. 

Too, you are the snow fleas that swarm each footfall. 

 You are the breath that winnows the snow's 

                        hard-pack like petaled clouds. 

Unplait me. 

I want this for us: 

 both the re-leaf and release of furrowed brow and chest. 

 To feel the blossom of a lover's breath. 

To feel you untie the knotted throat.