Canadian Poem - THE COLD By Kenneth Sherman

In this countrythe cold drives people inside.
Their houses swallow them.
The furnace churns
and they sit in the warm bellyof the great house bear,
filled with a private odor.
When they venture outt hey wear hats or ear muffs and resemble ridiculous animals.
They flap their arms to keep warm like people-sized birds.
In summer they emerge but you can see the winter has not left them.
You see it in their faces, their movements,in the way they greet one another,
tentatively, as if there may not be another summer and winter will last and last
like a condition that is chronic.
But they don't walk to the clinic.T
hey accept it the way their ancestors once accepted God -without singing,
without celebrationand in August,
in the wilderness,they stare in amazementat the profusion of greenand accept the naked silence as a hymn.