Dear ghosts, in winter my camp on the hill becomes
       

an island, plowed road over half a mile out. We walk
with pack baskets, snowshoes, a sled to haul the grain. Our tracks
disappear behind us—how the wind hungers to erase us! When I say
camp I mean my house has no foundation. We cut a trapdoor
in the floorboards, dig a hole in the earth beneath: jars of pickles
and mincemeat, apples and carrots, potatoes. The mice ransack
our rations, score them with teeth-marks. In the kitchen, fire
belly-churns the cast iron ribs of the cookstove. Wind punches
the front door open, coils around the cabin, braids itself up the woods,
over the mud, skim-ice glinting the ditches. My hill swallows
a neighboring hill. The neighbor's car crawls slowly home, headlights
beaming brighter than a coyote's eye, seeking me out. The wind
is just a voice inside my head, I tell myself as the wind breathes back,
as the wind tells itself, tells me. Who will erase the wind? Enough!
It doesn't stop. This night is made of all our breath—

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Copyright © 2018 Julia Bouwsma All rights reserved
from Midden
Fordham University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission