Some aspire to
breeze-bent meadowgrass
and cattail lullabies,
but are destined for
gravel under tires
and snow on the
mountaintops.
All things considered,
I don't mind the cold.

Stratus melts into the dunes
like they've never been apart --
a sugarcoated monochrome,
a love awash in early morning haze.

All systems froze
on the final inhale,
and frost filled in the gaps,
seeping, noiseless,
through the cracks
of a body now coursing
with the frigid inertia
of another November
come and gone,
leaving behind little more
than a spire of
crumbling birch bark
and a trail of frozen sap.

Dying embers send the last
of their flares up into the black
while we sit alongside and pray
that rescue never comes.

Linger long enough
and I'll join you under
the sagging porch roof,
beneath a night that
whispers sleepily
to fill the hours before
daylight wanders in
for the morning shift.
I'll rock myself to sleep
in the old bentwood,
and you'll drift off, too,
before Orion has a chance
to say hello
or goodnight,
but he won't hold it against you.
And I'll be gone when you wake up,
but linger long enough
and I may just come back again
to sit for a spell
beneath the universe,
on top of the world,
in the old bentwood.

The sky is falling
head over heels
for a world that doesn't
bother looking up.

Weary winds seek solace
in the arms of conifer giants,
having not yet discovered that
even mountain pines shiver
when winter is at its darkest.