One set of shallow footprints between plant rows , young farmer doubling timing with some place to go ...Two sets of prints , one very tiny , first time in the garden for a curious toddler....Three sets of prints , two brown eyed helpers now , learning  , practicing the craft taught by Father ...One set of prints from a Planter walking slowly , recalling two sweet children , now with gardens of their own ....

So here I will stand
free but sad until the end of days
Company to my constant companions
Loneliness and Bitterness
Been through so much together
to the end of the earth and back
my laptop is stained with tears
my words with blood
and my mind with a black childhood
so many words
too many words
always read to fast
always heard to slow

because the sun
grows less tolerant
of us, and the fingers of cold come
I must drink more coffee before
I venture out to do all these human things
to keep a grip on a job that holds a tighter grip on me

we live in a gentle place,
but in my 13 years here,
even I have found it to be cold
I have lost my mind of winter,
forgive me , Wallace, it stays preserved
like Viking rations in eastern Oregon snow

the entire city froze in
its tracks last week,
the threat of snow that
came only as a sneeze
of sleet,
even the clouds are laughing at us

I qualified as an old man before
people started telling me I was young,
the sky is gray and heavy enough
my joints swell to birthday balloons ,
the back under my skin a stain glass church window
in the evening , I envelop my wife as I am a coat of frost and melancholy

let the outside world be nothing tonight ,
social concerns and scattered responsibilities
sentenced to hang on the coat rack ,
tonight, let there be only the hiss of a space heater
the solidarity of cats and two people who escaped
into the warmth of together,for a few hours more