TRAVELERS
            Linda Hogan
                p. 1993*
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The terrible cold
is a closing hand.
It takes back the edges of land and water
it once offered.

It is alive,
you mustn't doubt this,
and it holds danger in its fist.
It says a mirage
is a city of warmth,
but when you go there
it is always beyond
the next white horizon
that can never be possessed.

I was looking at that far city
the night snow lied
about the darker world beneath it,
that brittle night
it grew cold so fast
the geese froze into water
and couldn't fly.
Their fear cried out
across the helpless land,
and when I heard them
I was the hand of death gone soft
enough to hit the solid skin of water
with stick, with rock,
with fear that what held them
held me.

South was their way that night.
They wanted to follow it.
Even my human ears heard its blue voice
in the stretched and beating wings,
as I cut one leg loose, then another,
until breaking gave way
to currents above and below
that drew them. They pushed
against the broken edges of water,
long-necked angels that rose,
escaping me and ice
and sky took them in
beyond the curved edge of horizon
where one beautiful world
moved above another
skimming the flat white lake,
the wounded ice
left behind to heal itself.


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* from _Book_of_Medicines_, 1993

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