POEM: OASIS

Oasis

Safe in this arctic season,

flowers can take an age

reaching the window.

So it’s by chance or otherwise

that one day you look out across

all that unbroken white,

suddenly surprised to

remember feeling.

And feeling the difference

come as quick and as sharp

as the snapping of a leg bone,

you think you might do well

to hold your breath and wait

while the pain settles in

for a long winter’s nap.

OKAY. A BUMMER. I KNOW. Bleak and unrelenting like the polar vortex weather system that’s enveloping large parts of North America as I write this. Pardon my French, but it is freakin’ freezing out there folks! I feel like doing what those high school kids did to stay warm in the 2004 movie, The Day After Tomorrow. (Great title. Not so great movie, but they keep replaying it on television all the time. I guess since TV’s such a frozen wasteland and all.) Trapped in New York City’s central library, with the frigid weather closing in on them, they begin burning books to survive, fortunately from the shelves of the library’s tax law collection.

For those who don’t know (like me) what a polar vortex is, it’s
  

…an upper level low-pressure area lying near the Earth's poles. There are two polar vortices in the Earth's atmosphere, overlying the North and South Poles. Each polar vortex is a persistent, large-scale, low-pressure zone that rotates counter-clockwise at the North Pole (called a cyclone) and clockwise at the South Pole, i.e., both polar vortices rotate eastward around the poles. The bases of the two polar vortices are located in the middle and upper troposphere and extend into the stratosphere. Beneath that lies a large mass of cold, dense Arctic air. Wikipedia.

Got that? So the recent blast of frigid air we’ve been experiencing is due to the destabilizing effects of a rapidly warming Arctic which has caused that freaky-cold Arctic air to move uninvited down here. So let’s get on with global warming, already! I just bought a time-share in a Baffin Island condo, so the sooner the Arctic loses all that snow and ice, the better. I need to move to where there will be some sun, surf and sand. Just think how much we’ll save in shovels and road salt and stuff!….

So, the poem:

The speaker is alone, isolated, yet he feels “safe” in this frozen state. The speaker calls it an arctic “season” which is a little odd. What does that mean? Is the oasis a season then? One important characteristic of the oasis is that flowers there take an “age” to reach the window. And by age does the speaker mean they take a long time to grow until they reach past the windowsill? Or does it refer to some timeline? Since the speaker feels “safe” there, presumably the lack of flowers is a good thing. 
We have another image of wintertime as “unbroken white” outside. The fact that the landscape appears “unbroken”, contrasts with the imagery of the leg bone. Perhaps the speaker is reluctant to experience anything that is ’broken’? Perhaps the speaker does not want to accept brokenness is necessary in some way?

The speaker is “surprised” to remember a feeling, emotions long suppressed. This  memory of feeling disturbs the speaker. He sees a “difference” between how he is now and how he was. This is a painful awareness. This awareness of past and present has come suddenly and seems not to go away. The quick onset of awareness contrasts with the lethargy of the speaker’s recent past. What caused the speaker to suddenly, “remember feeling”? How did they lose the ability in the first place? The speaker indicates that the pain will “settle in” for a “long winter’s nap.” The speaker holds his breath, waiting for the pain to come.

What will happen?  His oasis has been described as being in an “arctic” season” which has no time frame on a human scale. How long does the arctic 'last'? Before global warming, we would have said forever. (Which, of course, is not accurate, but you take my point.)  
By the poem’s end the season has become "winter". The pain the speaker experiences, of remembering how they once felt will “settle in” now. When it emerges in the spring, what will happen?
The poem ends with a reference to, “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, suggesting the speaker may find a gift waiting for them.
Even if it's just a lump of coal.