JANUARY SNOW

 A New Year’s snow, the snow untouched, the road
is forked ahead, without a footprint or
a track. The winter-morning shadows lean
and indicate the right, but we want left
where no one lives in winter, ‘round the bend
and down the hill, a shuttered cottage on

 the cove. It’s hard to visualize this cold
and storm across the island, somehow, for
I know it only by its summer preening.
How do fields endure the frosty heft
of snow? How hard to walk to pathway’s end
when ice is in the ruts? How late comes dawn?

 I’m not naive. I know it’s bleak, remote
in winter, but, I want to catch the boat.

 L.E. Wilson