Winter does not want to unclench her talons from our bones, not yet. She howls in protest at our doors, shaking them with fury as her fists find their way into soft-shelled hearts of stone and wood and brick and wool. From miles away i feel you here, i feel your cry in her, your eyes flung wide open in the dark, recalling a metal roof and solitude sleeping next to you-in the emptiness your mind spirals out its fingers and sleep slides from our body cavities a distant memory. You become Black Oak and i am touched by your rage, your sugarcoated depth of despair like a well in the earth swallowed by a mysterious bloom-covered moss. I know with the morning will come your poetry, because deep within you i live, like the coyote, like a crystal in snow, like Colorado, live alongside your deepest fears as a call to the wild and a call to arms.