love in winter   August cowers across the round. Winter needs none of that now, nothing but the chill encamped in darkness, morning long beginning, holding back, neither by will nor patience, something else, and it pulls you from me now, something mercilessly true, reckless and witless but for the call to gravity, obedient. . . . Sometimes you give back what I have given, meet my yes with never, nettle me with questions that I cannot answer, and you know it -- but please or vex me, push or pull, our hope still waters our winter fields, and the sun will shine long in August, and your love will grow with mine.     © Michael Fleming Casper, Wyoming February 1987