ABSOLUTION

1. At first, you clench
   with cold, tighten against it,
   pull your jacket tighter.
   With every step into the white,
   the ground gives
   under your boots.
   You enter the pure:
   untouched expanse,
   white birches, old oaks,
   dry clusters on sumac
   gone from red to brown,
   landscape sketched
   with chalks and charcoal.
   All you have brought here
   weighs heavy on your limbs
   as you trudge, gaze, ache.
2. You walk in cleansing silence,
   a sacredness inherent in weather.
   There is freshness in the cold,
   even if it is difficult
   to breathe it in.
   Your tears,
   whether of sorrow
   or regret,
   or the simple shock
   of meeting winter face to face,
   freeze on your cheeks.
   You slog up hills,
   stomp over prints where
   others have come before,
   tromping down snow
   to make it easier for those
   who will come after,
   your breath ragged,
   puffing small clouds.
   You are not the only one:
   furred coyote scat
   next to the trail,
   tracks of deer, rabbit, squirrel
   in curves and zigzags,
   and something even smaller –
   mouse? vole? – that dragged
   its tail between tiny paws.
   Evidence of so much that is
   alive, unseen.
3. In time you feel your body
   stoking your own fire
   from the inside.
   You loosen your hold,
   pull off your gloves,
   let your shoulders settle.
   When this kind of day arrives,
   you must enter it,
   take what it bestows.
   You recognize
   your own tracks
   as you come back around.
   Whether earned or given,
   something has released
   as you return
   to where you started.
   You see home now
   through the trees.
   What you carried
   when you set out
   is no longer frozen.
   Through the heat of your
   persistent steps, your belief
   in winter’s power,
   it has been transformed
   into invisible vapor
   and released
   into cold blue sky.

Photo by Jo Round on Unsplash.