Kedar Karkare, PhD

There was a year when fall turned into winter

And winter stayed forever.

The leaves gave up early,

Tired of performing

A task with no end

And no meaning.

Words, now spoken out loud

Hung heavy between us

Unreturned arrows

And two empty quivers.

We packed our cars

With clothes, and shoes, and silence.

Soaked in tears

The salty, warm kind

Usually reserved for joy

But this time weighted

With the end of the beginning.

It was bittersweet

When we moved to the mountains

Not for escape,

But to remember

How to move into stillness

The way breath fogs the glass

And how dew beads on the lips of morning.

We built fires and forgot our phones

We learned the language of our bodies

Long forgotten, now remembered.

As our children slept peacefully

In a world unraveling beyond the pines.

In the eye of the storm

Something stirred

Not hope…not yet.

By spring the bucks had grown antlers

Some remembered their names

Others, we gave new ones.

So when the thaw came,

We did not leave

We waited

We stayed

We settled.

Because the year everyone moved to the mountains

Was the year we remembered

How to stay.