A jogger slogs the asphalt path,
the streetlamp haloed in fog.
Wooly-haired women up and down the block
sweep dormant stoops and mind their clocks,
their coat pockets brimming with sunflower and thistle.

Snow comes down like rice at a wedding,
snicks against the well kept walk.
The cold blues one woman's veins
as her neighbors twitter like birds.

She knows this weather like she knows her bones.
Winter is an empty teacup, a rattling window,
the snap of icicles falling from an eave.
And she has watched her good men slip away.

The radiator hisses and spits.
Spring becomes another thing lodged in the braids of a rug.
She will beat this dormant feeling out with her steady pulse,
the future deep in a drawer like letters from a neighbor's spouse.
She spreads ash like seed, like salt that helps her keep her feet.

She hears beneath the snow the sound of mattress springs
losing the weight of guilt, that early riser.
There's just enough light in winter to catch the flash
of a watch face studied in the dark.
She pulls the fading heat around her, more fleeting than a blanket of snow.
Listens to the door pulled to, how it shakes her empty house.

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No books or chapbooks yet. I keep meaning to get a manuscript together, but I haven't got much beyond some decent titles. I've been nominated for two Pushcart prizes and, in the last two years, I've had over a hundred poems taken by journals including Rattle, Folio, Prairie Schooner, 5 AM and Diner. I love the work of Charles Simic, Louise Gluck and Russell Edson.
 

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autumn 2006 | kaleidowhirl