In my mythology, I am not in the rainy day that is today in Toronto.

I am wandering the arctic, dressed in capes of stars and night, with my two white-bear familiars safeguarding me. The air is so cold that even sound freezes, and the melodies that make it from my mind to the outside are gilded, icy, suspended.

Try as I may, there is no permanence here, in this cold land. Everything that feels alive, these melodies, this exhale, can only shine for the briefest of moments before the black cold nothing snuffs them out. That is the lesson of the north. The making and the doing are it, are all. There is nothing to hold on to, nothing to show for your trials, except an ability to be perfectly there as you exhale. All ends with winter, and the vast ending opens the way to the potential we all have to begin again.

 

 

your fists closed full around our stars
this universe of ours
the love we made
nothing left but the breath i draw
in the snow in shangri-la

the fits and starts of what we feel
turned you to steel, to a switch blade
won’t turn coats with the hearts I draw
in the snow in shangri-la

what a mistake i didn’t make
what a chance you didn’t take

look with eyes of winter see
everything once sweet
gets buried underneath
i’m unborn and ready for the thaw
in the snow in shangri-la
i’m unborn and ready for the thaw
in the snow in shangri-la