The Keeper’s Dream

Kiki Johnson

The ice angel said, “I know you dream

of snowfields with lost fawns & tall pines”

There are those of us who look to the call

of snow’s powder to warm our souls.

The blanket of death to keep us moving.

To the call of herding spotted fawns back

toward clearing in deep woodland, where

majestic papa waits. We are the keepers

of the deep-down buried things.

We understand beauty’s need to wait in

hush & hollow. To wait under fallow ground

in the silence of stasis. The first thrust

of the plow’s blade can be so horror-heavy.

So full of ache & wound. “You scar me”

Ground wails. Ice angel yields to we watchers

of the fields. As out of these furrowed wounds

comes the beauty all our better angels knew

was there. The snowfields become meadows

& yields of crops for grown bucks & fertile does.

Ground’s marring, the beauty borne of snow.