That first December, the world was going mad –
us against them and to hell if you disagree; 
 
winter blizzards lashed fierce and white against 
the double-glazing while ice burst the plumbing, 
 
emptying my block as one by one, the neighbours 
hightailed it elsewhere to wait out the storms. 
 
Alone in an alien city, in a corner apartment 
at Centre and Aiken, I filled the hours 
 
with books – politics and history – and Bach's 
solo violin works, streamed free on Spotify 
 
and broadcast through a bluetooth speaker. 
I wish I could relive those solitary nights: 
 
cocooned from the dark, hearing the snow's silent 
descent, watching steam rise in wisps from a mug
 
of Earl Grey; the violin's singular voice 
enfolding each word I read, uttering grief – 
 
longing – peace. That's when I learned how fullness 
can reside in hunger; how endurance  
 
is its own reward; how a lone fermata, 
caught between indrawn breaths, speaks its truth
 
as surely as arpeggios leaping frenzied
from one second to the next. What would I give
 
for that space again to inhabit my heart,
touch the core of something tender, untouched – 
 
each imperfect cadence a calling of deep 
to deep – as if waking on Christmas morning
 
to snow piled high in banks, blinding and pure,
on roofs, windowsills, cars; snowflakes eddying 
 
in the wind, tinselling in the sun: distant 
echoes of something lost, and sometime found.