Time, relentless wind. Awake this winter night
I hear its empty roar, filled with angry nothing

Passing on its way to nothing beyond the ice
On our window pane. When the sun rises

The ice may last a day or two, that’s how cold
The wind has made us, but it’ll melt when we’re

Not looking, like it was never there, like we 
Won’t be someday. My hand is on your hip.

Our bodies’ warmth a single thing I won’t 
remember when I’m dead, so I’ll remember 

Now, unless our minds are like the wind
And carry some fragment from our time

Together, dislodged from this world and 
Blown to the next, together, or empty,

Or empty, together, no memory but the thing
Itself, afloat and away, that’s the both of us.

—for Mary, 12/24/22