Emily Chase, All In Knots (Skirt Detail), 2013
Drawing paper, paper tape, vellum, spray paint, acrylic paint, ink
It’s human to want warmth.
Winter tulips longing to flower
again, a trumpet of skirts
breathing
in their underground season.
The living will find heat.
Yet, cold will meet you
anywhere. The body knows
how to keep what it needs most.
Strange how a coming winter sets
fire to the trees, a sea
of falling fever
hemming the sidewalk
with temporary death.
Find where you feel safe
and go there.
It takes such little effort to live
this way, to let the minutes
fill a moment, like a morning
so thin it almost touches
the hours of yesterday.
A white nightgown
of frost effacing
a country road, a country road
with hard shoulders,
nothing to lean on.
There’s a reason barn swallows
spoon eggs into mud nests.
There’s a reason
why moths perish in flame.
Who hasn’t been soothed
by heat? The cat curled
beneath the hood of a truck,
what affection she must feel
for that purring engine,
enticed by a hot envelope
of air.
Because the heart is a machine
for living. It knows what it needs.
Because love of love
is deceptively easy.