Breathing snow   You can do it awhile.  Air pockets remain,  locked around ice crystals. But not forever —  just long enough to replay the avalanche    rolling over life, sweeping love downhill,  leaving you flattened in white,  no way to reach for sky. If your ears still hear,   eyes are not frozen closed, hand trapped  near face can clear a bit of space,  you may have sufficient time    to listen for swish of metal probes  slicing nearby, promising beams of light.    If tempted to sleep, imagine   a new lover finds you, scoops a place  by your side, lies close. Together, you breathe hope into deep snow.                              Timothy Pilgrim

Timothy Pilgrim, a native of Montana and retired university journalism professor living in Bellingham, Wash., is a Pacific Northwest poet and 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee. His poems have been accepted more than 500 times by journals such as Toasted Cheese, Mad Swirl, Cirque, Santa Ana River Review, Windsor Review, Hobart, Otoliths and Prole Press in the U.S. Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. He is the author of Mapping water and Seduced by metaphor: Timothy Pilgrim collected published poems, which the back cover calls “a 10 on any Richter imagination scale.”