Ground

The ground is ice, hewn from glacier.
November mornings are a frozen fog.
Third-grade afternoons disappeared after the flurries started
falling. Everyone would shout exaltations to God. 
We knew, but we heard and embraced the truth.
The early afternoon light was tempered
from some tinted corner. You know, I felt raw
when the worst of winter inched above the earth, fossilizing
the enormity of four frigid months to come.
It felt like a vast collection of sagas unread, untold,
not yet rolled out for the public to know, and soon to ingrain
in their subconscious. I held a fraction of the time I had and
what I yearned for. Was not enough to dredge the full
length of a year, thrummed into nothing, brined
like last year’s turkey not yet defrosted but soon.
Once this machine has thawed from the initial freeze,
I wouldn’t have felt it were possible if I didn’t know
houses could bang because of 20-degree temperature drops.
In January, all of the world stops moving
and I wish we knew the formula to get ourselves back.
Forgiving oneself is a labor of Hercules,
bringing what’s left of the world that’s been shuttered.