These Winter Evenings by Bonnie Proudfoot

These Winter Evenings

In Buffalo the snow flies horizontally on the wind,
clumping on windows in dense polka-dots.
This lake effect is hard to take seriously,
all that silver light, all those dots. Here, in Ohio,

the winter blows in without much sense of humor,
but ever since I hung a bird feeder from the eaves
I've had wild cats on my porch. I feed them, too, now
but they are as wary of humans as the chickadees,

racing for cover when I open my door. Through the blinds
I glimpse them: gray and white, sable, calico, shaggy and sleek,
they are arranged like ornaments beside the balustrade,
on the railing, waiting. These frigid evenings

they're bolder than ever, one cat or several cats, yowling
at my door, and from the living room sofa
I can hear the thump of them, jumping off a rocker,
off a ledge, each sound saying you are not alone,

saying this world is subtle and complex.
Sometimes winter goes on and on like this,
some nights the wind is so shrill
it seems like the world can not be kept

from inside the house, or, moments when,
seeking warmth, maybe in front of a fire
perhaps on a velour sofa, wrapped around
with a wooden throw, I long for the stillness

of prayer -- how quiet things become, how warm
to stay motionless in dim light and drift off.
There is a portion in the Hebrew service
called the Amidah when all heads are bowed

in private supplication, a congregate stillness,
the articulation of silence. There's a certainty
that all thought goes somewhere, that the meditations
of the heart know, without question, where to go.

But here the wind chill is below zero, tomorrow
may be cold again, and for the rest of this week
there may be no sun, nor any certainty at all
beyond the slow disappearance of bird seed

and the sudden startling retreat of cats
as I open my front door, and the wind, which blows
through the eaves endlessly, as if it is not yet able
to find respite from itself.

***

by Bonnie Proudfoot

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