That winter we camped in the cottage
at the lake, no running water, no heat.
We burned a fire in the old wood stove.
For once nothing was surprising.
The beer stayed cold in its bucket of snow.
Jack Frost slicked the windows silver.
Back home our aging parents still raised
their eyebrows at us. Tsk-tsking.
We slept in our coats and hats, buried
ourselves in blankets. We’d forgotten
what it was like to be so cold, forgotten
how so little shelters us. When we woke
we went outside to stand atop the frozen
green-black surface, suspended between
worlds, the sun scratching a red line
on the horizon, cold air clawing our throats
a galaxy of green-black depths swirling beneath
our feet. We had trusted everything then.
Like summer’s sure return, a heft of stone.
We had thought we would last forever.
–
Karen Elizabeth Sharpe is a poetry editor at The Worcester Review and author of Prayer Can Be Anything (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her poems have appeared or will soon appear in On the Seawall, The MacGuffin, SWWIM Every Day, Split Rock Review, Mom Egg Review, and Halfway Down the Stairs, among others.