"snowbound" poems
Rub these eyes.
What a misspent night.
I cast one die, tumbled through to light
aimed away from
where I left you
on a corner, towards a ******
...You know...
Hung my hat
on these stupid hopes,
tried to steer us two on an icy road.
Slid through stop signs,
you stopped speaking.
Anyway, I'm flying out tomorrow.
*Tired as Hell
switch planes in Minneapolis
On the way from Richmond to Montana
This far North,
the snow is never far away.
Last one through
the gate
and still sleeping.*
Slug this Fall
down in airport bars.
A snowbound move, but I got disarmed.
so I aim to
where I came from
Gift myself with what's familiar
...You know...
Out here there's
not a lot of noise.
A few pinned dots between the bullet points.
Here it gets cold,
just a few miles
from the real Continental Divide.
*Head dipped down,
and shoulder leaned windward.
Take two steps, try calling in the morning.
This far North,
some flights can get grounded.
Not much
between
here and Seattle.*
*Heavy coats
and fortified spirits
keep us warm between our vacations.
This far North
no Saints to preserve us.
Not much
between
here and Seattle.*
Dec 30, 2016
Dec 30, 2016 at 11:19 AM UTC
Winter camp,
snowbound bunch.
Uncertain smile,
what's for lunch?
The forlorn hope is grim.
Mrs. Murphy says to
commence on Milt, and
unceremoniously eat him.
Feb 21, 2020
Feb 21, 2020 at 9:30 AM UTC
shuffled into the hallway
the laughing ignorance
stews in its bathrobe and cigar
at the edge of its own manicured lawn
with a pale eye it it calculates
with a thin cold lip it ponders
he makes his lazy way to his bed among the spilled leaves
makes his way to the comforts of eyes closed visions
the laughing ignorance proverbial
fool in ragged cloth dancing a jig
on a spring moon's grave
flowers in hand and wreaths of holly adorning
his head like a crown of soft thorns
his skilful laugh echoes across the barren field
littered with the passing of days
strewn with the formulations of nights bitter embrace
no mere words can delay or
mislead the way that darkness creeps into the mind
when alone with its own devices
done with his jig
he sits on the springs moons grave
and sips at the christmas wine
savoring its crisp life on his tongue
the laughing ignorance still wearing
the dancing fools leather shoe
is a hobbled prisoner of his laughing jest
no other time or place has room for his kind
for his pantomime of long lost victory's
on beachheads of distant sandy shore
his rancid eye calculates me
in all my rumoured mistakes
and he speaks to that dream not to me
so i will leave him here
standing in manicured existence
of his own sour pain
the fall will find him sleeping sweetly
on the spring moon's grave
and it will renew him
leaves swirling down as the world steals the crown
of the tree above
he will be a young man once again
renewed by the promise of maidens dancing
and the dance of winterlight on snowbound fields
Jan 12, 2014
Jan 12, 2014 at 12:55 PM UTC
snow shoe challenge
trekking untouched expanse
cracking beneath
rock climbing boots
eyeing open summit
crevaase shifts
lifetime chances
snowbound slide buries all
expanse untouched
Oct 2, 2013
Oct 2, 2013 at 8:12 PM UTC
I CAN WITHSTAND ANYTHING THAT COMES,
I'VE HAD MY RATION, IF GOD'S DONE HIS SUMS,
ANY KIND OF STORM, POWER CUT OR BLACK,
SOMETIME'S YOU WONDER IF YOU'RE EVER COMING BACK;
I'VE BEEN SNOWBOUND AND WITHOUT ANY KIND OF SOUND,
WHAT'S IT LIKE WHEN YOU'RE DOWN TO YOUR LAST POUND,
SACKED, RETRENCHED, HUMILIATED AND IGNORED,
YOU THINK YOU'VE BEEN FORSAKEN BY MY SWEET LORD,
ONCE I COULDN'T EVEN SEE WHAT WAS IN FRONT OF ME,
HOW STRONG ARE YOU IF YOU LOSE YOUR HOUSE AND FAMILY,
I'M TIRED, CAN'T GO ON ANY MORE IT WOULD SEEM,
YOU LOSE FAITH, RESILIENCE - YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN;
BUT THERE'S ONE THING LEFT - COUNT A BLESSING AS YOU DO,
HOW LUCKY I AM TO HAVE SOMEONE WITH YOUR POINT OF VIEW.
Mar 15, 2016
Mar 15, 2016 at 3:01 PM UTC
Our Dog Howling at Sunset
At sunset, the dog howls at sirens in town.
If he were snowbound in Talkeetna,
A hundred miles from nowhere,
What would he howl at instead?
I saw my husband trudging through the frost,
His blue jacket half-tinted orange and red,
“I don’t like the way you sound,” he said
As he left, deserting one who was already lost.
If I were a thousand miles from him now,
Listening to the wolves’ mournful cries,
And my beloved shunning me as he does now,
Would I pretend to believe my lover’s lies?
Or, instead, would it be enough to exist
Where the short summer dies on winter’s grist,
And true love’s a dream born on a dreamer’s mist,
And the one to stay with is the one you’ve just kissed?
If I lived in a land so cruel and hard,
Would I be bargaining with my soul?
If love’s short date were but a moon’s silver shard,
Would he be a passing thought, and my son the whole
Of any future we had scattered out on the snow,
Or caught in the rime-bound trees?
Would I see then what I already know—
That his future lies with himself and not me?
As our wolf howls a timeless wail to the air
I can listen and guess at its season.
I can comfort myself it will always be there,
Beyond human hopes, beyond reason.
Far wiser, the black-furred hound, than I,
To sing out his ancient song.
Waiting, watching, as we struggle and die,
Only to pass his wisdom along.
Waiting, hoping as he does for a touch,
He is made to think that he asks too much--
Waiting for a kind word or loving hand--
Wild and alone, in humanity’s bleak land.
A southern writer once lamented the lack
Of courage in humankind,
And suggested we borrow the strength we see
In the branches of an olive tree.
Yet there’s more courage in the dog-wolf’s cry,
Penned out on our city-cropped lawn,
As if he knows the grief of my son and I
When the man we both love is gone.
“Could we not as well” take a lesson from him,
Our wild and loyal friend?
To howl out our sorrow and loneliness,
Though the pain might never end?
Now, in the twilight I hear my lover return,
With no greeting to me, and I burn
For the summer’s newborn passion I recall.
The twilight wolf’s mourning tells it all:
That we never will have what we had before
That love can die just as well as it’s born,
That a child is the only one who restores
What is lost to the lonesome, the wolves, the forlorn.
July 6, 2001
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 11:45 PM UTC
Bright-eyed and bold
With dreams that unfold
Artless, naïve and hopeful
A certain unease, that shifts with the breeze
Afflicts you
You think that bliss
Doesn’t come with just a kiss
But to other lands you fly
In your mind, unsatisfied
Such discontentment inside
Wishing….
Wishing for walks, for long midnight talks
The hearth of a snowbound cabin
Mysterious scenes from a cinema screen
Fill your mind
If I could make all your dreams come true
And take you to Heaven – I would
You’d still be wishing for more
Always unsettled, unsure
Wishing… wishing…
Wishing for grace, a moonlit embrace
Tears bathing hands at parting
A silk-curtained room, and the finest perfumes
Are your due
When you survey your reality
It makes you turn away, away
You grow detached day by day
Wishing for what - you can’t say
Apr 4, 2015
Apr 4, 2015 at 1:25 PM UTC
Cars,
Like coffee pots,
Break down,
And more so,
When you least want them to.
So imprisoned,
The frigid,
And with no power-windows,
We didn’t care about the heat,
Only the smoke
That now stung our eyes –
Two-fold
Atop already open wounds,
And the cancerous,
Lying in wait, most often,
Indiscriminately.
So enters the second urge,
And it controls me,
I don’t control “it;”
“It” being a mood frosted
Amnesia, free,
Like beer’s hiss,
At the crack of a can.
And like beer,
“It” runs out
When the money does;
All too quickly to be
Replaced by the
Haunts of –
Bill collectors, war
And the knife in the drawer.
Something beckons when
We spot a diner from within
The snowbound derelict
We reside.
Scraped change and reckonings,
We can afford a few,
Drinks.
Forgotten were the coats when
We abandon ship, abandon you,
Abandon me,
And more importantly,
The haunts;
Our chariot, a remain,
A wreck on shores unknown
With bodies, perhaps,
Left for the living come spring.
Jan 25, 2016
Jan 25, 2016 at 9:19 PM UTC
My Old Flame
My old flame, my wife!
Remember our lists of birds?
One morning last summer, I drove
by our house in Maine. It was still
on top of its hill -
Now a red ear of Indian maize
was splashed on the door.
Old Glory with thirteen stripes
hung on a pole. The clapboard
was old-red schoolhouse red.
Inside, a new landlord,
a new wife, a new broom!
Atlantic seaboard antique shop
pewter and plunder
shone in each room.
A new frontier!
No running next door
now to phone the sheriff
for his taxi to Bath
and the State Liquor Store!
No one saw your ghostly
imaginary lover
stare through the window
and tighten
the scarf at his throat.
Health to the new people,
health to their flag, to their old
restored house on the hill!
Everything had been swept bare,
furnished, garnished and aired.
Everything's changed for the best -
how quivering and fierce we were,
there snowbound together,
simmering like wasps
in our tent of books!
Poor ghost, old love, speak
with your old voice
of flaming insight
that kept us awake all night.
In one bed and apart,
we heard the plow
groaning up hill -
a red light, then a blue,
as it tossed off the snow
to the side of the road.
Lowell Robert (1964). “My Old Flame” (p. 5). For the Union Dead. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, NY.
Jan 3, 2017
Jan 3, 2017 at 9:49 AM UTC
*It is that time of year again
when dark of night
like black and white -
and winter’s frosty breath lays claim
to landscapes washed in moonlight’s pall
both high and low
as dark and glow -
stark scene, upon the eyes and mind.
Soon to come, the snowbound hours
captured and held
tie and then geld
to suit his need, his want, his will
when the season’s only color
splash, hot and red
cries, left unsaid
swift, nay, merciful end of one.
Awake, awake my chosen mate
to fly with me
behold in glee
new mysteries unseen this life
does hold for one in interest new
and greet the dew
to be with you…
He has returned to stake his claim.
Lin Cava*
Oct 19, 2010
Oct 19, 2010 at 5:14 PM UTC
Sometimes I wonder if I'll find a love
That buys me roses every Monday
Even after fifty years,
Or walks across a thousand miles
To deliver a snowbound love letter,
Or drives six hours as a surprise
To attend a Sadie Hawkins dance --
And then I think I'll be content
With someone who calls every once in a while.
Dec 5, 2012
Dec 5, 2012 at 10:41 PM UTC
one pine tree
resplendent in symmetry
another year at home
on her snowbound slope..
apparently not destined
not this year
for light display
with sacrificial death..
roots still grounded
and a treetop pointing
to bright starlight above..
through a sturdy trunk
rooted sparks do flow
upward..rejoining
the glow..
Dec 22, 2012
Dec 22, 2012 at 8:36 PM UTC
Radiance of Your ketheric kiss
is all i have left....
sleepless i pace through
the long snowbound polar night
listen to the wolf's forlorn howl
and a woman weeping in the
nether-lands
this abominable separation!
tracking Your crystal footprints
with my heart
Hari!
can you not hear the Soul's lament
sighing over remote, frostbitten blue
trails
that lead nowhere if You are not
present
Companion of Heaven!
when will You visit my tent again?
Aug 10, 2014
Aug 10, 2014 at 12:16 AM UTC
9:13 p.m. on Wednesday
sitting, bolted to this bar,
next to tired tropes and worn out jokes
I've met a million times or more.
And the drinks all swirl together
and they start to taste the same
going down
or coming up.
It really doesn't matter much.
If the streets looked any different,
they'd still bear familiar names:
trees and states and Presidents--
Left turn, snowfall, sitting fences,
walking home
and getting old. These towns all
look alike, with weeks spent walking
in the cold.
And the salt on the sidewalks
might season your footsteps--
sure--
a steady, frigid cadence
carried through like a threat:
shallow and petty, from downtown to home.
Alone on the sidewalk,
it's 7 below.
And I don't know
what that is in Celsius,
but I know there's no home
for at least
another block or 2.
I came clean in muddy puddles,
***** slush and snowbound streets,
in towns that looked alike.
Tonight, I'm headed for clean sheets.
So close the doors, unbolt the patrons
Thursday morning, 2 a.m.
And it never feels like half an answer
when I push my front door
shut again.
Dec 2, 2014
Dec 2, 2014 at 11:53 PM UTC
*Winter's icy fingers
freeze my world.
The door to spring
now in a time lock
like a bank vault
Sitting alone
by my window
warm breath melting
a portal to the street
in the crystalline
patterns of ice .
Outside cars are like extinct
dinosaurs abandoned
in the street.
Covered in pure white.
How elegantly the snow
delivers its silent discipline
Now the wind
wails like a grieving lover
causing the ice covered berries
to gently ******
like glass wind chimes
In the mist of falling snow
Ghostly skeletons of the trees,
leafless grey and frozen
patiently await the springtime.
Far into a distant time to come
apple blossoms glow in radiance
and a church bell chimes.*
Jun 2, 2016
Jun 2, 2016 at 3:10 AM UTC
The green dies.
Never totally, but effectively.
The shadows reach across the land,
increasing their span.
They spill and run off edges like paint that never dries.
Yet you can step in it and never leave a print.
...Or never have one in the first place,
never leave your mark, just crush the foliage:
**** whatever life is left.
The air steams your breath:
A lesson in mortality.
Look! See what makes you tick?
Let me take it, freeze it, condense it,
put it on display, and leave none for you:
the one who made it...
just to make a snowball
(which is really just a fight waiting to happen.)
(Who stockpiles ammo with no intention of using it?)
(Who bites their tongue with nothing to say?)
Too many snowballs grow to be an igloo:
fallacies you can live in for a while.
It's better to just be rid of them.
Let them fly, let them fly...
Relinquish your breath back to its element:
say what must be said, even if it kills you.
It's all the same in the end:
the land will thaw,
the shadows recede,
the snow will melt,
the air will fill with argument.
Why make so much noise
if you can just throw the snowballs
as you make them?
I'll tell you my frozen friend: shelter.
At least then, we can hide for a while.
Mold it to our will.
Sure, we could let it accumulate naturally.
Unformed and unmolded, it's just a burden:
unfocused feelings, drifts of words,
letters, and sounds.
It's better put to use as shelter than mud.
At least igloos are useful for a time,
(Mud still has to be dealt with in the spring,
Why start early?)
and snowballs are at least manageable:
little bites of envy, jealousy, suspicion.
Woe betide the sun who made THIS winter!
Leave US in the cold, why don't you?
Shower US in discomfort!
Leave US to deal with blessing after blessing
in the worst way possible!
It's in our nature to throw the snow,
to waste our respite, to fight with words.
If we don't, in our igloos,
we're washed away every spring
when the thaw takes our shelter,
our words,
our breath,
our loves,
our lives.
Oct 18, 2017
Oct 18, 2017 at 11:37 PM UTC
I can see where you're coming from
By the swing of your hips
But you can never see what I'm saying
Sometimes it seems like my lips
Are invisible
Look what you've done
Can't you see what I've made?
I've turned this old sweater inside-out
Settled on this bed that I've made
It fits just right in times like these
With the winter wind gushing
And snowflakes fluttering
The air feels a little warmer
When your heart and my stuttering
Are sent colliding
Dec 23, 2012
Dec 23, 2012 at 3:48 PM UTC
Soft blue shadows
On deep and fleecy snow
Hiding what's beneath it's blanket
Soft blue shadows
Beneath the dead grey sky
A tiny cabin sits snowbound
Soft blue shadows
Through barbwire brambles I
Stare to see if life is within
Soft blue shadows
As from the brick chimney
Thin dark smoke is falling straight up
Soft blue shadows
Within a small landscape
So familiar, so remote
Nov 26, 2012
Nov 26, 2012 at 11:00 PM UTC
one pine tree
resplendent in symmetry
another year at home
her snowbound slope..
apparently not destined
not this year
for light display
with sacrifice death..
roots still grounded
and a treetop pointing
to bright starlight above..
through a sturdy trunk
rooted sparks do flow
upward..rejoining
the glow..
Dec 22, 2012
Dec 22, 2012 at 8:36 PM UTC
she was as see through as her
fish-netted leggings.
she sat on the quad with flowers tangled in her braids
and a book of poe on her lap.
she told me about how his voice at 3am over
the phone sounds like god, and how his eyes
look like jesus; she was a catholic girl, raised
with a bible in her right hand, and a handful of experiments
she thought up to change the world when she was seven
in the other. she told me about the cracks in between
his fingers, and how they resemble the roman roads;
not perfect, but they all lead to his heart. sometimes,
she likes to picture the way her right eye
twitches when he kisses her, and then she
starts to wonder about him and how he
treats her similar to her father but the words
to describe this aren’t coming out of her mouth fast enough for her to think of the next sentence.
“tell me about you,” she asked.
i write poems in the dark hours of the night you talk to him;
i am envious of whatever faults you find in his fingers.
i never knew god, but **** i swear i met him in your laughter.
i see your teeth in my dreams but when i wake up, you’re still
talking to him at 4am.
i memorized the way your foot lifts off the ground when you’re about to
take another step, it’s hesitant but curious, similar to the
way i want to tell you all of this but instead,
you sit on this bed of snowbound grass
sharing stories of poe and not enough of what makes your
eyes twitch, or what faults you can find in me. open your hand,
place it over my black heart, i don’t remember the last time it turned red.
Apr 25, 2014
Apr 25, 2014 at 1:04 PM UTC
a snow filled winter wind rushes in my thoughts
but it is in the silence between our spoken words
where my heart caresses each line of her beauty
and swims in the heat of her eyes entwined in mine
where her heart desires mine
where spoken truths are just a
reflection of the deeper fires of our souls
and that ultimate truth expressed in our passionate embrace
becomes the living breathing of our souls
a snow filled winter wind drifts past the window
but like the world itself
seems so distant from us
cradled in my arms
the fabric of her clothes sweetly perfumed
dance tingling across my senses
her soft breath exhaled dizzying to my heart
her words soft warm wet fill my head
a snow filled winter wind
steady against a cloud soaked sky
spills into the very edge of my mind
as the comfort and beauty of our embrace endures
this is the truth i have sought my entire life
this is the promise that i so deeply desired
her eyes capture me and for a moment we sit gazing
we have saved us
we have found us
and the love and heat of our embrace
keeps the winter wind awaya snow filled winter wind rushes in my thoughts
but it is in the silence between our spoken words
where my heart caresses each line of her beauty
and swims in the heat of her eyes entwined in mine
where her heart desires mine
where spoken truths are just a
reflection of the deeper fires of our souls
and that ultimate truth expressed in our passionate embrace
becomes the living breathing of our souls
a snow filled winter wind drifts past the window
but like the world itself
seems so distant from us
cradled in my arms
the fabric of her clothes sweetly perfumed
dance tingling across my senses
her soft breath exhaled dizzying to my heart
her words soft warm wet fill my head
a snow filled winter wind
steady against a cloud soaked sky
spills into the very edge of my mind
as the comfort and beauty of our embrace endures
this is the truth i have sought my entire life
this is the promise that i so deeply desired
her eyes capture me and for a moment we sit gazing
we have saved eachother
we have found eachother
and the love and heat of our embrace
keeps the winter wind away
Nov 19, 2015
Nov 19, 2015 at 4:50 AM UTC
A fire coursing through these veins
Melts every trace of ice away.
Dec 16, 2015
Dec 16, 2015 at 8:54 PM UTC
Cold nights
It's always Winter here.
It seems this season's stretching on all year.
The beers are gone
so let's get walking.
Grab
your coat and let's do some talking.
Loud, through the night.
Know our strides will crunch through old snow
beneath old street signs.
Best
bets aside,
did you gamble
on my days?
Did I waste your time?
Days come early,
nailguns out.
Walls go up and ambitions drown.
4 blocks down the street, you're screaming,
**** the cold and this town. I'm leaving."
Sheetrock walls
and paycheck borders
keep us pinned,
in line, on short order.
Cook
our melting brains.
Froze in place
and broke your heart, rinsed me down the drain.
Cold nights
It's always Winter here.
This frigid season's stretching on all year.
The beers are gone
so let's get walking.
Grab
your coat 'cuz them ghosts been talking.
Howling each day.
Haunting all our snowbound steps and
rattling their chains.
Alarms and cars
and pulsing hearts.
Cheapest
prices paid to make
our wage.
The clocks in bars
count tarnished stars.
Cheapest
prices paid to pave
our ways.
Best
bets aside,
did you gamble
on my days?
Did I waste your time?
Days come early,
nailguns out.
Walls go up and ambitions drown.
2 blocks down the Ave., I'm shouting,
**** the wind and the snow that's pounding."
Rent check walls
and sheetrock borders
keep us pinned,
in line, on short order.
Cook
our melting brains.
Froze in place
and broke my will, rinsed you down the drain.
And I'll move
4 blocks
next Spring...
Jan 10, 2019
Jan 10, 2019 at 4:17 PM UTC
Take my hand,
we'll fuse our last
few folding dollars together,
and we'll walk our snowbound streets
and try to fend off the cold.
Find a place that's too familiar,
shivering hands on the door.
Halfway laughing.
Half a cough
as we protest we're still not old.
Break the skin,
I'll break the silence.
Sigh
and watch our breaths ascend
the frigid night.
Tell me, "Show me something beautiful
or let me leave the light."
Now, fill me up. Just sing that tune.
Two songs of piling rust.
I love
the way you croon.
I'm just a walking ghost.
But what does that make you?
Red-faced or blue?
Two-faced or true?
Do you stay?
Or cry, "Adieu!"?
Strike the band,
they'll play the last
few notes of that "Civil Twilight."
and we'll speak our foolproof plans
and try to forget the cold.
'Til you say, "That's too familiar."
Make your way to the door.
Half a laugh.
caught in throat
I hope they'll draw out that last note.
Break the skin,
you **** the silence,
laugh-
-ing with descending face
and frozen eyes,
saying, "Show me something beautiful
and let me leave the light."
Dec 28, 2017
Dec 28, 2017 at 7:36 PM UTC
the metal man
his arms weaponized and poised at the ready
sanguine his face carved in bronze
the 'darkly world has come' is the lens of his eye
disturbs sublimely the world as it peers
in narrow perception at the swift and reckless
life of flesh and bone that moves all around his cold body
darkly come are the phrases like prayers uttered
spoken with reverent malice
spoken like evils true loves
neath the forest of life's sounds
the labours of the steam engine that fuels
this poor dark beast of a metal man
sputters and heaves as its malformed intents
work to move him to his destiny's grave
peaceful is this place in the world
the winter sun dazzles the walkway neath snowbound tree
as if by design such tender care made such devices
to reach such metal creatures hidden heart
to wrestle its soul from its dark purpose
twisted is the logic that pressed innocent metal
to such dark works
enslaved it to the meat of vile tongue
and the bitter wine of such inhuman misery's
so here it tread in the gardens of eden
its weaponized arms matching its uneven gait
as it moves slowly neath the leaves
its 'world come darkly' lens forever focused
on the ever narrow path of its fate
pity this creature as much as you ware it
neath that dark eye the innocent metal
it knows not how to break the iron grip of its master
sorrow
Mar 9, 2014
Mar 9, 2014 at 8:19 PM UTC