Some Notes Beginning With Winter
The winter
inclined to speak loudest
in a heated room
at 5am
with vague sleep-shapes
painting the walls
like demons
with teeth
but no jaw strength,
filtering as always
at 5am
a complex reality
through a single
sleepless eye
like drinking
an ocean
from a fast-food straw.
*
The winter
draws nearer her sex
like an overripe fruit
to my grass
below,
that always anticipates
in these late months
the body’s need for warmth
and gravity’s misinterpreted laws.
*
The winter
is a blind mother
stumbling over
the corpses of her children,
the crackling
and popping of skulls
and ribs underfoot.
She’s clinging to the balustrade
for balance
the entire length
of a never-ending river
she knows only as ice.
*
The winter
places its ear to my chest.
Then to hers.
Then its own.
And I ask aloud
to the morning
“are there nuances
to our wailings?”
| John Sibley Williams |
|
