We are standing at the door after a party,

and a man I don’t know very well says that

I should write a poem about the moon

and the winter’s night, and now I wonder

what he had in mind—something about

a black branch against the white snow? 

or something about the way we all hesitated

to leave that house filled with wine and

flowers to linger in the cold—the cold,

which might  be what he wanted me

to write about—the cold that cracks the house

at midnight and slices through the air

like a sword slipping into its sheath,

or the sound of ice-skaters on the lake,

their blades cutting slivers of  the moon

into the dark surface of the winter’s night.