The Other Side

There is another side
to every snowbank.
The place the wind
could not touch,
did not reach and
pile snow in
random patterns of cold.

It is quiet there.
There is little noise
and the muffled
stillness sings warmly
to the heart.

There is an underside
to the surface of the lake -
to the surface of the pond.
The duck and goose
paddle under all that come
from above

paddle it down to
that place on the
water's bottom where

there is little noise
and the muffled
stillness sing darkly
to the heart.

This inward thing -
this other side to
the snowbank,
this underside of
the surface of
things

this is a place
so close that it
is far, far away.

Our heart is
just below the
skin,
just below the
bone,
but it takes
a journey to
Byzantium to unlock
the final membrane
of remembrance.

It is that other side,
it is that under side
where all the empty
fullness dances and swirls
like a flake in a
whirlwind
and a speck on the
current.

A sparrow flits
and breaks the concentration,
an acorn falls
and the attention
is brought back
to now. And the stillness
awaits a traveler from
another day.