by Evan McWilliams | Scottsdale, AZ

How the season, its shine stealing through brine,
Binds all ships to shore then slips into a bridal
Gown—uplifting snow, un-lived-in whirlwind—

Is like a promise: there is nothing that will not hold you.
And despite the grains of salt on the walk, its truth
Comes home: ice—startling sterling view—

Welds to the undercurrent of stone, from street to door.
It glitters like the aurora, that static sky-ore
Of pure nothing that charges, that holds the world—

Or so it should seem. But all of Paradise
Is no figuring in ice. No crevice
Of the footprint, of the fallen should suffice.

You dream of dreaming. This is the flash of a shovel
When to wake is to scrape the sheen away to walk at all.