White-Out

Clouds release a wide blanket on our mountain,

tuck us into stick frame homes.

I stare out windows at entire days of silent flakes

falling in calm accumulation. We are slowed.

In the stove I build tiny cabins of what is left over

from my husband’s construction sites—

strips of trim thin as matchsticks broken into kindling

laid over wretched, crumpled news, flaming up

like weak prayer to catch afire thick fuel—

the quartered bodies of last year’s pines.

In cities and suburbs, pathetic bloated men—

finally off their Rent-A-Center couches, fingers twitching—

cosplay favorite Call of Duty avatars on actual streets,

paid more than teachers, quaking with T,

play dress up as ICE, fall on legions of terrified,

weeping bodies, smash scores of brown cheeks

into concrete, go home and eat from the hand

of their meek, complicit wives.

A small woodpecker plucks at my suet basket

black and white masked, no red crown. Larger magpies,

blue wings thrashing, hurry her to finish.

Undeterred by cold, obeying their bellies,

all are easily lured by a woman—cozy, white,

able to afford suet—fighting her fear

that birds will not return for months, like last year.

My Black sister-in-law asks:

Where do the wailing women and children go,

stuffed into cars by masked men? ICE?

Traffickers disguised as ICE? Border Patrol?

No one can know. In this blitzkrieg of bigotry

and ignorance, impotent politicians, who can we ask?

To refill the feeder, I have to break

the pristine surface of snow. I postpone,

wait until the minute the last crumb is snatched

to not disturb the continuum of fluttering returns.

A brief pause in generosity before I soil the view

with evidence of my own presence—footsteps.

Why can’t I disappear?

To protect myself, save precious, countless hours,

to salve and take a break from gutted rage,

I stop scrolling social for weeks, scan headlines only,

oblige despair, factual curation, numb with cold.

A veteran friend, her voice raspy with smoke

and wisdom, reminds me of resistance,

of people suing, rising up in protest and ferocious joy,

of algorithms of hope. Cautious, I open my feed,

careful not to gorge, sure our phone conversation

was overheard, content suspiciously tailored to my need.

Played by billionaires, tossed crumbs, I breathe.

After heavy snow, undiscouraged, birds fly tip to tip.

Agitated branches eventually throw off their white load,

spring up, startling the ground below.