Real Winter

Mark Vinz (1942–)
Born in Rugby, North Dakota, Mark Vinz was raised in Minneapolis and the Kansas City area, and attended the universities of Kansas and New Mexico. A professor of English at Minnesota State University at Moorhead, he has played an instrumental role in the Minnesota literary community for decades. (corrected)

Still Life with Thermometer

Today you remember windchill—
40, 50, 60 below—
after a point it ceases to matter.
Your car is sealed in ice.
All footprints have drifted over,
houses drawn up together
in a ring of smoke.

How do you speak of the real winter?
It’s cold, you say. Cold.
It moves through doors and walls.
This is the way you have learned to speak,
without postmarks, without stamps.

You watch the dead growth
of last summer’s garden
rising from the snow,
a spider frozen on the windowsill,
the gathering dark—
your own cloudy breath
bearing messages
to each corner of the room.