The Blizzard

You'll never take off your blue cashmere for me, your jade belt, or even your white walking shoes that squeak like a nurse's. Who are you with now, taking his pulse? Why am your care? Those snow-white stockings will never drift on my floor like waterlilies. I will row the boat of my sleek, narrow bed to the center of the lake and bask in the sun, opening my basket of strawberries, a buttery cheese, and a musky bottle of Spanish wine, and very gently, carefully get drunk alone., ... the blizzard of your body. I think of Ötzi, the Ice Man, 5,000 years ago in the southern Alps, herding his sheep home. He was prepared for anything: a quiver of cherry and dogwood arrows, a longbow of yew, an ax of burnished copper, mushrooms and einkorn in a leather pouch, stripes and a cross of blue- black soot tattooed on his ankles and back. When the snow came, he didn't have a chance.