01.03.05 - 5:51 p.m.

A Poem Written for the Other Side of Winter

Essentially unedited as-yet and un-expurgated,
by me.

Sometimes the words slip from my mouth and mind and fall
all around my throat, necklace or noose, I'm trapped
inside the delicate shell, with that old ego of mine,
(or is she an id?) -- ever present shadow self,
such vague outline on these interior walls.

Sliproot, slipknot, slipstream solipsism; in the
middle of the engagement I have reconsidered my
commitment to gray skies and silver waters. I'd like
the sun back, please and remember that it hasn't been
so long, not really, since the clouds ripped open
like fabric split against the bias (here are your
cross-hatched threads, here is your grain) and opened to
reveal that lovely blackblue, half a dozen shades deeper
than the bruises on my arms, and the stars pinpoints of
pinpricks of the light-beyond pushed through the fabric
(remember again how it split wide open) of the sky.

I can feel these words in my mouth, a sour aftertaste,
old ashes, new thoughts circling the drain of the old
ones, always at least somewhat recycled. I've
seen these molecules before, or - if not these - then
some others, too similar to be distinguishable even were
I to adopt the rational and finicky precision of a scientist
who has forgotten that she is human and her errors
are not divine.

It is afternoon, the sky is a quilted blanket of gray
and the air is humid as if it were spring, wet spring, some
fog-bound gray spring and it has been raining since last year,
or maybe the one before that, so long
that the peonies have forgotten the sun and are diligently
turning the wet and colorless gray to green by osmolalosynthesis,
some strange chemical process that changes water into gold.

Except, of course, that it is not spring, not wet spring, not
spring but aberrant January and the year of rain is three or
four endless days, only, since the last click of the calendar and
I'm not dreaming of green but of white and the peonies are
skeletal remnants, withered husks, remembered sticks of growth
drifting desiccated above the dry blown grass.