Anne Marie Macari

Ice clinks along strands of matted
hair, ice in my breathing. We are frozen
as far as we can see, a trail
across thousands of years, thousands
of winters in this bone-world.
This knowing is just a flash, a vortex,
as if a hawk could spiral
down instead of skyward and open
a pit in the earth and into it
I would fall, tipped
off my path. Maybe
I'm falling now
the sky moving farther from me
and I in a cold heap.
Snow against
snow, walls of dreams
and projections, a turning
toward private singing,
toward strings in my throat
and the tender tip
of my trunk, stroking. When I am
just an image I'll wander all through
the long torrent-scoured tunnels into
the crawling space where with one
finger moving fast
she paints me onto the ceiling and I'm alive
again with many herds: leapers, stampeders,
lonely stragglers. Snow mounds
like a soul over me—I huddle,
a massive beast
confused in the whiteout.