Snow plows beeping
Reverse whine and scrape
Swirling blizzard of waking—Strange
in this place where
boredom banks both snow and cold
Are my eyes running?
After all
there's a stiff wind, and it’s 18 below....
Pictures and phone calls make up my family
Stray cats eat suet I leave for the birds
who make names for themselves in sunlit bushes
Love these more than...
my hearse of a job
where that ice cream vat—slipped
smashed
my sodden dish-doin’
fingers against sink
Pain mounts its insurrection!
Ambushed!
from every direction
Fainting in steam
Squeezing my eyes
till the blood shuts my brain-failing
Down my wrist
all over
the front of this rubber apron....
Someone hates me somewhere
Someone found me more tenacious
than a road-kill skunk!
I eat I drink I work I sleep
between these vicious icicles
-18F = -28 C