Winter, 1993

Through the dimmed lens of days,

My drowsy mind

Targets both place and time,

Winter, 1993.

It was nostalgic tragedy

Wed to the ceremonial solstice

When dark tidings smoldered the frayed wick,

And I was a salted snail,

Hooded up to the nines,

Remembering through

A chokehold of gunshot sobs

How lazy snowflakes

Used to eat up the lamppost compasses,

Flitting helical lesions

A stirred haze

Shaded blank,

Leprosy white,

Atlas shouldering

A slow motion avalanche,

Bleached in February firewater.

The shuddering saturnine chills

Deadlocked us

Into bone scalding oblivion,

Sunless miseries

And 5 P.M. curfews

For another eight weeks,

As winter fell like a plague

Of starchy white sheets.

I used to make my tarpit boots

Slide in a fumbling scuffle

With the mirror sheen sheets

Of winter glass,

Crying out

Third degree frosted burns

As I cracked

The arctic back.

Winter dazzled,

Even the apple peeled star lanterns

That rattled night’s surly cage

Took longing notice

As the shivering moon

Envied the satellite child,

Born of God’s

Sculptured flesh,

A callow captive

To the ephemeral spell

Of a frozen age.

God, I was so lonely then

And so empty there,

Soldiering a barely silent

Crunch snow shuffle

Through the duplicate rows

Of cheerless houses,

Stopping only

To flash sunken eyes

And a mournful parting glance,

Towards that impenetrable home

That lodged love.

How I wished it were mine.