Almost Sonnet Written as I Think about The Tempest and the Temperature Drops to Negative Seventeen

Almost Sonnet Written as I Think about The Tempest and the Temperature Drops to Negative Seventeen

I imagine wrapping myself in every scarf
and shawl I own and setting out, in the morning.
I will pass the vacant lot on one side, the lake
swollen with cold on the other, and stand opposite
the windows where I once lived ("this thing
of darkness I acknowledge mine") and somehow
balance in the middle, though the lake coerces me
to come and look too closely at its quiet surface,
that dance floor where no one ever balances for long
("deeper than did ever plummet sound I'll drown my book").
And I know that I have walked here for no reason,
never solaced, only to see what lights are on,
and I will pass the vacant lot again, returning,
struggling over solid lumps of snow as hard as skulls,
to greet my doorman and take the elevator up,
to where I have lived, it seems, for years, alone.