It was the idea of distance, not distance itself,
that troubled me. Even saying it, exile—
breathless, betrayed the feeling. Some say
the gift should be perspective, but the desolate field
of ice over water does not console me:
a sight, like a feeling, that arrived as winter began
to make sense, every suffering illuminated
by form and reason, like an answer
to a question that came with no asker
until the shade of crystallized blue washed
over the entire season, the half-dark
that consumed the days, nothing but a color
to latch onto grief.…Wouldn’t it be easier to say
the lake was a sign of danger, a specter revealed
by nature’s infinite gaze? It wasn’t. The ice
had been hard for months. So hard snowbanks
collected and lingered, and flocks of geese crossed over it
like a bridge, in which even skaters abandoned
their tracks, who followed the path as far
as it went, disappearing like the passing
of a dream.…A dream: that is what it felt like,
to see shoots rise on the branches or ice
clarify daily into water: the confirmation
that all had been lost before, before it returned,
and returned, and (Know it!) everything returns.