Mountains wearing frozen trees, dragging long, wet,

asphalt scarves and dripping ice disintegrated on

the salted pavement. Snow, sort of, mixed rain

and beaded sleet, doing that diagonal descend

and swoosh movement just before the flat glass

splotched eye windshield. Roof beating as if

on the inside of an exhausted lung, puffing smoke,

caked in ash, cancer, the swollen, sick life preceding

the dream death. The dream we’ve been practiced for.

The one we wake up out of and fail to remember.

Like getting up lugging a back reticent

to straighten up, to deeply creaking groan

through fine casted iron hinges and swinging heavy

doors wide, fatly coiled handles on levers,

unable to find an ember, no spark, no buried

orange egg housing seeds of future warmth.

Once this dream is done, so are we.

So is our memory. And if another one is desired,

then from the bottom back up, rebuild the fire.

Or put on ice clothes same as these trees,

resolve never to sleep, fail to dream.

Claim life, and sacrifice all non-life in its name.

Be bulldozed, whipped, stripped nude and dug, no,

bursted deep into, into two, four, eight lanes of high speed fury.

To be alive but in a hurry. A scarf will wrap a neck,

gloves knit molded hugging hands, shirts, pants.

In this life, this realm, you can create the comfort

you need. Don’t like my answer, ask the mountains

wearing frozen trees, dragging damp scarves.

They, as well as I, have not yet learned how to die.