Finally, some negative degrees °F
(windchill double digits below zero)
to resume Minnesota winter bragging rights.

Weeping willows drape their bare
golden vine veils in sweet sadness.
They don’t scrape the cool blue sky

the way neighboring columnar red maples
reach upward to tickle
stray clouds. The eyes

of paper birches peer through
white bandages without giving away
what they see after dark.

You want to know what’s inside
those mysterious wooden crates
laying beside the finally frozen lake.

A rainbow of canoes, stacked
in their racks without a current purpose,
hovers around a bend in the trail.

Whittled from a 20-foot,
wind-damaged bur oak trunk,
the Lake of the Isles #2 pencil

sculpture leans but refuses
to fall. All that’s left
of a 180-year-old tree.

You’ve layered up and are ready

to meet the weather
poets in their secret crystalline den
above the roots and ridge.