As the wonderful Heather Shipman has sponsored my Patreon at the $5 a month level, I’ve written a poem on the theme of her choice, which was “how terribly evil winter and cold and snow are.” As this is a subject near and dear to my sunbasking, reptilian heart, I was very happy to oblige – so here, then, is the result:
winter
The season of ice
grows downwards into the unsuspecting spine
like a stalactite,
fusing frost to vertebrae
until the nerve-numbed soles take root
in granite no less frozen
than Everest;
chilled hands cup a cup whose heat
explodes their crinkled life-lines
like atomic palmistry;
outside,
snow encroaches the naked air
like phlegm in a larynx,
swirling,
barking to free itself
in sodden clumps
that tack to branches bare like ribs
and shudder, drooping,
hiding the ghost of life that cracks
and rattles the panes under every
riverbed, window, iris:
all cold portals closed and ingrown
waiting
under the burning white
for spring.
shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows 