One Way To Do It

She makes them out of ice and snow –
these children of hers: daily animating the tableau

of their sweet circumspection, good behavior,
by incising bright new angles in them: as their savior –

yet again, again – she carves into each frozen face
the favors of fresh gesture, nuance, grace,

to lend expression to the gliding panoply
of what the heart can feel: beneath the widest canopy

of glacial night, they will not go; they won’t grow old.
All she ever has to do is keep them cold.





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