WINTER

WINTER

Winter

           is a dead man’s game

north wind bellowing insults

           cutting

           stinging

anvil-like solidity

           beneath stiffening toes

hunched over like a drunken climber

           dodging a glacier’s vengeance

Breath

           in vaporous gulps

stammering in January dialect

iron landscapes

           severed flatland carcass

           spires of ice

hard-shell rapidity

           over sun flecked roofs

serrated crescents of frost

marking the windows

sparrows skidding

           across crusted canyons

dissected by diagonal planks

           of waning light

          

light starved voices

            wailing against the entombment of the season