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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.

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