The Exchange

Playing the Exchange

Yes, it's beautiful
this landscape of white
broken by the dark tree lines.

The wind howls
the snow accumulates
like bull market profits
only to later melt down to a trickle.

Logging trucks tear up the dirt road
jeeps slide down,
otherwise silence,
cold slippery ground

and isolation--
anthropomorphized into a punishment for sins--
each roof-chained icicle is a bead
on winter's rosary--
fingered in penitence
melted into the spring of forgiveness.