Midwinter

Today you’ll help your pagan friend lift her dead

dog’s body to the highest branches of a maple tree.

On the phone, you tell me it’s the solstice—I should be ready.

Today the light is shortest, and it’s telling

me to hurry as I sort the bottles to recycle—

glass and plastic, slivered green. Your friend won’t sell

her house that’s falling down, or spend the time

to fix it, but you’ll help her put her mind to rest

in bare limbs, closer to sky, the sun’s climb

already finished when I go outside to shovel

snow from off the car, and bring the paper in.

I won’t tell you that I haven’t found a way to love

so I don’t waste, or scrape the bottom—the granite step

against the shovel blade, the year creaked shut

with nothing gleaned. The women in our family kept

the early frost from killing gardens, fenced

the planted beds with chicken wire to keep

the rabbits out in spring. No measures left against

the time or weather as this year ends, you try to somehow make

it up. You’ll trail what someone else believes,

and haul the dead weight up the bole. You’ll take

what little light is left to do your work, to wrap

the bale-twine tight around the sagging bones, your boots

balanced on splayed branches, body braced above the gap.