I walk through a snowy wood

in search of ambition. Let’s say
ambition looks like a gold swan.

Let’s say it radiates a perceptible vitality
and constantly twinkles.

Ice crunches beneath me.
My boots are soaked through, feet freezing.

The voice of a distant master commands me
to endure the harshness of my search

which, seeing as I am lost in an unfamiliar
winter wood, seems unreasonable.

The sun will soon drop behind the frozen
hillside. Shadows will no longer be

shadows but the way of things, and then I’ll
be the strange one with skin and worries

being ripped apart by the cold power of this
place, the pink mist atop bright white snow.

Tim Greenup‘s poems have appeared in LEVELER, BOAAT, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. His collection Without Warning was published in 2016 by Scablands Books. He teaches at Spokane Falls Community College. You can visit him here www.timgreenup.com.

Photograph by Priscilla Du Preez.