COREY VAN LANDINGHAM

III. To Have & To Hold

So I crush the pine needles, rubbing a cluster of them between my two palms until the scent is carried into my skin.

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I normally watch the forest change around me like a stop-motion film. But really, it’s just that I’ve kidnapped winter, shoved it down my throat for safekeeping, a key to some chastity belt.

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Yes, I am standing here, harbinger of frost, waiting for a creature to look like it might have missed me. Like some coyote, some hare wanted my ice storm.

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I will be here for years, this I have realized. I am being punished out in the open, which is why all the mice scatter away from my bare feet.

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Auspice with the ammunition of omen, the way the ravens spread thin across a yellowing sky tells me, Go home—you are a fool for light. Me, explaining to each hole in the ground, I won’t hurt you.

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I know the lie. The brutal condition of having hands.

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What stones can be raised up above a head, and how it only seems as if gravity is what brings their heaviness down. Some other surge, unspeakable.

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Tomorrow under the rotted-out pine there will be a patch of snow. Beside it, one wing of a hawk left untouched by a fox’s hot mouth.

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I will have run a fever. I will have stunned the forest into submission, grown bored, and wandered unapologetically away into a new season, same hands.