My mind was bleeding, I was in an ordeal
The snow, my drained soul, it would conceal
Stranded in that hollow lifeless space
Lost I was in his embrace
I saw it somewhere, that light
One that, through the hard times, held me uptight
A beauty and strength of some sort blossomed
And that horrid pain yielded and succumbed
Then came in the punch of reality, so full of heat
And in the ocean I sank forlorn with defeat
Lost in the waves without his protection
It ached me to see my choices’s reflection
I saw it all those 3 years and then
I fell but here I am, I rose again.

Frosty air, crystal laugh.
It’s unfair, when a puff—
a white cloud—is allowed
to break free. I don’t see
why it would ever wish
to escape. So, I kiss
your chapped lips to hide,
to keep
the puff
inside.

motionless Winter chill
crystal dry and vacuous
         still
life thrives minuscule
busy in me ******

Now heaven does not seem so
close, never singing, yet—
I'm putting will to whetstone
while building on regret.

Who is it that comes?
A crunch from the pathway heard
Icy frozen steps

Get the angle right,
and the light from a wan blue sky
reflects on the sodden ground
like a disco dancefloor,
pathfinding to somewhere
with umbrellas in glasses,
sand between toes
and baked skin

That it is February
in this upper latitude
can do one for a minute,
let us lounge, sweat loose
and remember our grins

‘A festive song for thy ears’,
Sang the jovial busker;
Brimming with gratitude,
With pennies of silver
Or the coppers from well-worked hands,
The heavy gold of the rich;
Once weighed down pockets
Generously giving.
‘A festive song for thy hearts’,
Sang the jovial busker;
Playing with precision,
With clarity and care
Or the subtlety of pristine art,
The blending sound of the voice
Soothingly warming.

Dirt shows through where
there should be snow
mercury is taking the
wind's temperature
as it coughs dust
the firs' grain
pops and splits
like chapped lips
the smell of fire
precedes smoke

We decided to take a walk.
If the moon and stars still existed,
they were hidden behind clouds.

Then a fog hit us like a wave, a cloud
that had run out of gas and crashed on us,
to further shrink the perceptible world.

Ordinary, walking people became vague
phantoms that could loom, in film noir
black and white out of the fog,
suddenly sharpen and colorize,
only to disappear again in moments.

Sounds, out of sync, or garbled, came sharply
from odd angles, turning that fifth sense unreliable.
Noises, at first muted, were abruptly amplified as
if the hand of that ghostly vapor ran a soundboard.

A man, moving in stalker-like silence, clops,
like a clydesdale on cobblestone as he passes close.

I half expected a distant fog horn to announce
the passing of a ghost ship where all be welcome.