In the slate cold
And grey ice of January
A few song birds
Raise brave voices
Overhead
Flights of crows
Wheel in their thousands
What hope is there
For spring?

Zero degrees but I was warm in my bed,
Feeling safe and immune to all outside dread.
The wind beat at the windows and near hid the voice,
That chilled my warm bed with its obvious choice:
To hide in my blankets and close off my ears,
To the crying for help now choked off by tears,
Or get in my clothes and go out in the night,
Offer help I can't give, and try to do right?
I'd heard all the stories of people who'd died,
While neighbors around chose to stay home inside,
Where it's warm and it's light and screams aren't heard
If your heart is all closed, and your soul interred.
So I put on my clothes and put off my fear,
And went out in the cold and strained hard to hear.
The night now was silent, the wind alone spoke
Of lonely and frigid and dying for hope.
The cold stung my ears, my breath froze in my hair,
And something remained of that voice of despair.
I could hope the police brought help for her grief,
To me they brought only a shallow relief,
I then turned away and got warm in my home,
And tried to forget the deep chill in my bones,
Forget that the city is full of such fear,
And it's warm and it's light and it's empty in here.

With apologies to Edgar Allen Poe.

Once, upon a weekend morning, while I slumbered, loudly snoring
After many a workday of quaint and forgotten chores
While I nodded, well past napping, suddenly there came a scratching,
As if the paint was gently stripping, ripping from the bedroom door.
“He’ll stop,” I muttered, “scratching at my chamber door.”

“He’s only bored, and nothing more”

Deep into my blanket hiding, there I lay in fear abiding,
Doubting, hoping I could sleep as I had ever slept before;
But the silence then was broken, and the door way, old and oaken,
Swung open as the clever kitty, made the lock a simple chore
And then my dreams were gone as are the winds of yester-yore

I knew I should have fixed that door.

Open then he pushed the doorway, then, with padded foot and whisker,  
In he stepped,  the ebon creature who I bought that cat food for
Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he;
But, like he who owns the household, perched above my pillowed snores —
Perched upon the feathered pillow which my sleeping bonnet bore —

Perched, and silently implored.

Then, methought, the cat grew braver, thinking of his breakfast’s savor
Poking at my sleeping visage, poking more, and more and more.
"Wretch," I cried, "the devil’s sent thee — a witch cat sent to leave me
No respite and no Nepenthe, but only the memory of the sleep I had before!
Let me quaff this kind Nepenthe and rejoin my final snore!"

Purred the black cat, "Nevermore."    

“Be that word our sign of parting, cat or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting —
As I threw him into the darkness of the Night's Plutonian shore.
“Leave my slumber unbroken!  Come you not with purr and pokin’
Take thy paw out of my nostril, and take thy **** right out the door!
Leave no black fur as a token, you eat at nine, and not before!”

Cried the black cat, "I like before."    

But that **** cat, never quitting, still is sitting, still is splitting
The recently repaired latex on my bedroom door;
And his eyes have all the burning of a feline that is yearning,
For the cat dish full of kibbles, sitting, sitting on the kitchen floor;
As my soul rose from the blankets, with a howling, futile roar:

Sleeping in on weekends — nevermore!

My wife rolls her eyes
When I point out another wind turbine
“Bird Shredders”
“Pork Barrel for guilty Liberals”
“Don’t they disrupt wind patterns?”
But
When I look up at a stately giant
Broadcasting infrasound across the plains
I remember my nose pressed against the window
Of a 1957 Pontiac
In Wisconsin
Yelling
“Windmill”
As we passed every farm
As my parents rolled their eyes.

On the old promenade
Stands the last elm tree
At the end of a row
Or politically correct sprouts.

The reflection of a star
Shimmering on the night-dark water
Born in the heart of a fierce sun
A million years
Jostled by his neighbors
To reach the surface
Then - free at least!
A hundred years more
Through dust and meteors and comets
To find a tiny planet
Then reflect off a quiet lake
And improbably die
In the rods and cones
Of my insignificant eye.

I’m told that Mrs. Firefly,
In a hungry, not a **** mood,
Will blink a luminescent lie,
And use the answering male for food.

I’m sure that Mr. Firefly
Believes he rules the summer night,
And flickers proudly as he flies
To that blinding, binding, blinking light.