Until The Storm Passes

The wheel-rounded wind races
across drifts, stirs a puff of snow
like the cloud of anger in your eyes
when my hasty breath shaped cold words.
Junco and chickadee snuggle
in dark-branched cedars, even the
crow shuns a dead limb for
a roost less forsaken. Aloft, deep
in the sky’s vault a silver dot
wakes in the sun as it jets north.
Well, let us take shelter in
a mood of firelit warmth and be
abandoned only by cast-off chill
moments ago of frozen distress
and settle for the night in
a corner of our own windbreak
where no tear turns to silver ice
as the sun sets and we grow
strong as the roots of bare trees
where sap hides until the
storm of winter passes.