Overnight, the pipes froze
And the subzero wind
Turned the air to glass
And the glass to wind.
Everywhere I look
The past pushes
Into me, or down on me
Like those old stories
Of horses
Rolling over
On their riders. Just now
I’ve noticed a chickadee
At eye level out the window
On a snowy branch. She’s
Picking at her breast
Doing work no one told her to
And when I look down
And back she’s gone
And I think if I’d never looked
Who would I be otherwise? 
My Nana hated snow
And also Fall. Too impatient
For nature
She’d take a rake
To the branches, to knock the leaves
Down and “get it over with already”
As she used to say. In those days
I’d watch my grandfather
Whittle a pencil
With his pocketknife
As the rough breaths
Of his life carved
Through me. Like her,
He couldn’t quit
Working, maybe it was something
About the way he was spared
From the beaches of Normandy
Or marching by a patch of hazel
In the Colmar Pocket
by dropping out of school to mill timber
And maybe he felt indebted
To the work, looking back?
Sometimes, he would catch me
Sneaking into the basement
Which smelled heady and sweet
With chemicals—paint thinner
And stain and metal, dried horsehair
Brushes caked with high gloss
Finishes, warming beside
A radiator which knocked
And clicked and still worked
Just fine. In Antarctica
A cold I’ve come to recognize
Makes the atmosphere
Clear enough to look
Into time. There’s a bust of Lenin
There at an old research station,
Though the ice has melted
So his head resembles
All those on pikes at the gates
Of crumbled empires. He stares
Toward Moscow
And some distant dream.
Over the ice, scientists look out
Trying to understand the same thing
As me. One theory goes
Our universe has a mirror
Moving backwards through time
And I get up from this old table,
The ink dry, and hear him
Digging a candy wrapped
In metallic foil made to look
Like a strawberry out of his pocket.
He holds out a hand, the pointer
And ring fingers shorter 
Where a board pulled his knuckles
Into the blade.
“Don’t tell Nana,” he
Whispers, “Save it
For later.”