This day is worth living because there, within,

is a billowing heat rising

from deep in my chest and emanating

out into the air in refracting tufts.

Because my own blued breathing

casts my pulse across my palms.

Because there in the woods I stood

four feet from a fox and we shared

a knowing look, because the same primal warmth

passed between us, because we both

snuck beneath the windstripped branches

and because we both disturbed the snow.

Because restless bodies of fish writhing

split the half frozen tributary as it cuts through the plains

and the idling deer watch me watch them.

Our bodies sear against the periwinkle sky,

extraneous limbs and florid digits cutting heat

into terrain almost too receptive to our being.

Because I am walking through the winter morning

and there are a thousand strangers

who would give anything to me if I asked,

and I too would give anything to them----all of us,

animals in the wet season,

sharing heat.