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

Days 2025: Winter (72-76)

Day 72

sing metal hull sing
on choppy spring waters

‘Sweet Surrender’ playing on the old radio:
down here where the rain makes sense

nothing wears away so fast yet more
vanishes every day, these bones, this skin

erodes and none of it means
much of anything at all

Day 73

dream then: a new eclipse
a downpour, a shadow

walk like new-Earthers
amidst the wasting world, old boots

across cracked cement conquered
by crabgrass and goose shit

but even still, there will be signs
that once people grew wings

and took flight

Day 74

breath deep into old machines
wait out the rust, that stink

of dead, gutted fish
unrealized dreams as we take up

pot metal swords we will play with
in the 2nd age of a bewildering childhood

Day 75

a world shrinks to pocket-sized
boiled down and dehydrated

and we must put on tired boots
take up our packs

discover a new one

Day 76

locked in and devoid of a season
drive headlong through a dirty rain

like dream fish fighting up river
home is there somewhere

under the world’s great wound

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

Days 2025: Winter (63-65)

Day 63

metal hulls dance, bump on winter waves
like old lovers at a class reunion

the wind acts bow and rosin
against the lines, they sing

Day 64

it’s lonely without the nightwalkers
they do not show themselves to me

spring is on the heel
but not yet splashed in the sunrise

and there is talk of what’s coming
though no one listens

Day 65

the air kissed
with a renewed sun

roaming herds of joggers,
placard wearing tourists

the momentum of the season
building: listen to the boiler burn

deep in the soul machine

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

Days 2025: Winter (61-62)

Day 61

cross currents run through
this sinew, these bones

Day 62

the air before rain held
that faint scent of fresh turned earth
and warm rain on tired cement

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