after Jimmy Santiago Baca

Today, running along the creek, I have a lot to be mad about, a lot to pop open a bottle about,                                         the sunlight traipsing through                                         but the trees won’t have it,                                         their steepled ceiling refuses                                         to keep me blind to the way ice layers                                         along the creek edges like shelves—                                         bracket fungi gone alabaster.

I am masked for the winter. I could feel caged. I could feel suffocated,                                         but below thirty-two, air cools the clouds of my breath                                         to crystals on my lashes. They catch the starlight                                         and moonbeams and I am the fairy face of winter.                                         How can I be mad, all silver sparkling like that?

This seventeen-degree wind could whip into a fury, stir the feeling of skipped autumns and wasted summers.                                         Instead, it stirs the dead leaves from their graves                                         as if to remind me I, too, am ephemeral.                                         So I let go. I let go and cling to the feathers of the mallards                                         floating carelessly in the freezing waters, unbothered                                         by the cold, my intrusion.

Soon these trails will disappear beneath January’s snow.                                         My run will slow to a walk, then, and I will notice things—                                         the gold-dusted berries, the way dusk bruises                                         the snowdrifts blue and purple—that I would have ran                                         right past had I not accepted the icy, uneven terrain                                         and decided it is better to walk.

Moonlight twinkling on fresh snow, creek refusing to still its symphony, tree limbs hands-up to the heavens in their bare grey glory—

          ​Ah, it is a good walk.