Sledding with Cats
Circling in white whirling sand,
old eyes blinded by the summer,
and numb feet in hard shoes
cannot tell it’s snow.
A car drives by on a silent street,
ghost at the wheel
singing a thirty year old song
thinking it’s still
alive.
The house, it’s empty, still.
Against the wall, a sled rusts,
propped by children’s hands
against a snowy day
long gone,
too many calculators and keyboards ago.
Still, in the granite sky
ten clouds make a wall
where the sun guards his back
and holds as best he can that high ground
against an empire of Cold
knowing what he loses one day
on another he'll win.
A child gets out
another sled, and finds another
hill, another child, another winter,
leaning against the door
and cries out loud the news
so even ghosts can hear.
And a dog that knows no better
drags her woman relentlessly
through cold frozen drizzle in
an infinite orgy of
evergreen canine spring.
Inside warm windows
cats are laughing.
Fall and Winter, 2010*
*For those who may think some of the lines are familiar, this poem is composed in part of recycled and expanded bits and pieces of micropoetry and twitter haiku written over the course of the last few months.
