2025, Days, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, winter

Days 2025: Winter (20-22)

Day 20

meditate on ice and cold, carrying enough warmth
in your pockets to carry you into the next work day.

For now, wait on the sun, the days to grow long and long
trying not to think how hot July will be

Day 21

there’s intercession waiting: the ice
just one more layer of thin skin

a temporary smothering here, supposing
the creation of air out of icicles clinging to the hull

pondering life as a form of evaporation
listening for the first hint of the skin cracking

Day 22

soak in a bit of the sun, debate with yourself
over which of the household chores

need avoiding. stick to decaf
aspire to be more like the dogs napping

while refusing to give over the whole of the day
to sleep and to the night that stands waiting

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2025, Days, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, winter

Days 2025: Winter (17-19)

Day 17

old river, old mirror tell me please
is this the old man you thought I’d be?

the dark horizon across illuminated
by a single strand of light

by your depiction the bridge, in pieces
a dream of metal lilly pads, headlights hop

have you drawn me out yet
the years running backwards in cross currents

in how many years will I return again
as a new born river monster

all memory
and gills

Day 18

rapt and content, even when circumstance
sends us out; yesterday’s rain

cleared some of ice and snow, and what’s left
is marked and polluted

that bite in the afternoon wind, a warning
but we find ourselves

cozy
nonplussed

Day 19

such a blowy snow
the globe

must be
busted

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2025, Days, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, winter

Days 2025: Winter (14-16)

Day 14

the ice covering my street is no respite
we wear down our pencils ticking boxes

on impossible lists: peace, like quiet nights
are notions typed into inaccessible documents

by uniformed bureaucrats
following the form of letterless laws

Day 15

tell me dear road dog of where my feet are going
I stopped my psychological cartography

somewhere south of a nameless town
where the diner and church are closed

for perpetual renovation and
all the stop lights on Main Street

blink
yellow

Day 16

the only advice forward comes from old radio detectives
god speaks through the great blue heron’s absence

we sit here both thawing and freezing
waiting for a snowfall mixed with ashes from the west

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