Cold now. <br />Close to the edge. Almost <br />unbearable. Clouds <br />bunch up and boil down <br />from the north of the white bear. <br />This tree-splitting morning <br />I dream of his fat tracks, <br />the lifesaving suet. <br /> <br />I think of summer with its luminous fruit, <br />blossoms rounding to berries, leaves, <br />handfuls of grain. <br /> <br />Maybe what cold is, is the time <br />we measure the love we have always had, secretly, <br />for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love <br />for the warm river of the I, beyond all else; maybe <br /> <br />that is what it means the beauty <br />of the blue shark cruising toward the tumbling seals. <br /> <br />In the season of snow, <br />in the immeasurable cold, <br />we grow cruel but honest; we keep <br />ourselves alive, <br />if we can, taking one after another <br />the necessary bodies of others, the many <br />crushed red flowers.<br /><br />Mary Oliver<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cold-poem/
