New Frontiers—Wisconsin Winter

Standing by Lake Mendota, even with a brave
sun bouncing off heavy snow rocks, my winter
jacket is wrapped tight like a second skin, my naked
face the frontier of the battle between heaven
and hell. Soon my lips will split in a thousand places
the wind chill, negative an inhumane number like
26, torture of a thousand pins…and then some.

The natives keep saying this has been a warm winter
much warmer than last year. They say, in 1902
[sometimes I have found it’s 2001, 1807 or some
random year] ten children, fifteen old men, two
Africans and a herd of Jersey cows died. This
is nothing. I light a cigarette for wood. Spring will
be here soon to forget this winter, and its dead.

Yes, for each one of us there are two deaths – your
Natural death, the life you die in your sleep, and
the other to be remembered always less than what
you once really were.