We’re all queasy and wretched longing

for snow. The youngest stomps around

the house. ‘You’re so mean’, she says, 
‘I want to go to Iceland, now’, and

snuggles into us and kicks until we yell

and she weeps. ‘It’s not fair, it’s not fair.’ 
The next paints the same picture over

and over, a dragon on a mountain, the

snowline is wavy, the dragon’s tail is thick
and lies beside the dragon like a comrade.

The dragon is at least as likely as our cat.

‘No, fine’, I say. The days so long I can’t 
remember how they began. You rub dubbin

into your boots and look North. The heat

falls in incessant waves like rain. The grass 
is hay. Every night I dream of mountains.

The Dream of the Swiss Village

dizzying at the base of an impossible mountain;
The Dream of the Snowy Beech Forest,

I enter alone and understand about the moths;

The Dream of Endless Delays in which 
I am looking at the slopes, excited,

preparing once more to ski but never skiing.

I wake each morning as one buried.