Letters in Winter

There is not one leaf left on that tree 
on which a bird sits this Christmas morning,

the sky heavy with snow that never arrives, 
the sun itself barely rising. In the overcast

nothingness, it’s easy to feel afraid, 
overlooked by something that was meant

to endure. It’s difficult today to think clearly 
through pain, some actual,

most imagined; future pain I try lamely 
to prepare myself for by turning your voice

over in my mind, or imagining the day 
I’ll no longer hug my father, his grip

tentative but desperate all the same. 
At the café, a woman describes lilacs

in her garden. She is speaking of spring, 
the life after this one. The first thing

to go when I shut the book between us 
is the book; silence, its own alphabet,

and still something so dear about it. 
It will be spring, I say over and over.

I’ll ask that what I lost not grow back. 
I see how winter is forbidding:

it grows the heart by lessening everything else 
and demands that we keep trying.

I am trying. But oh, to understand us, 
any one of us, and not to grieve?