Yesterday's Norther blew in as nothing more than a common cold
so we closed off our part of the house, cranked the furnace
and would have snoozed but the wind-chill's clamor and the earsplitting
rustle of dust bunnies under the bed woke us and we had sex instead
which always gives me direct memory access to other marriages,
but then at my age events often remind me of other events, reduced
in my cortex to bittersweet vignettes from Moscow or Norway
places in a latitude of history I find only on medieval maps.
After the storm I keep my chill misunderstandings to myself, stay
off the newly-frozen streets on which a rime remains distinct
only when seen through windows grimed with February dirt.
Frost Heaves Ahead is the road sign of my longing but true cold
stays stubborn degrees north with its brouhaha of snow
and nursery rhyme mittens. Ice fishing and furry outdoor boots
belong in someone else's story. I don't ask whether to ski
or not, or who hid the damn snowshoes? In this brief bitter season
we make love, in weather that freezes too quickly, goes soft too soon.
Hot fall days. The park with biometrics. Pictures sucked up from behind the low metal fence
like a summer drink.
A jumped-up preacher sees he's being watched, plays to the metal tubes proclaims a spongeful of vinegar
is a blessing that assuages thirst.
From the very edge of the continent of enlightenment, he explains how sin fell around him like wedding rice
tossed after his retreating back.
A bench buckaroo sits down to tea with a retired music teacher, her upper arms sway
like velvet curtains as she pours.
Visionics knows these two, takes tea with them, then sieves a thousand suspects
guilty of bad hygiene, crumpled shirts, zit picking.
Among the gathering of see me suits, some stay as immune to photographs as to carbon monoxide;
they lack a yen to hide their faces.
Everyone in the park applauds the buff policemen; there's safety in it. When the cameras tire of shrubs and chess,
they swing away.
Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives on the edge of Texas with one foot in Arkansas. She is the author of two books, Reading Berryman to the Dog (2000) and Discount Fireworks (2008). She has two published chapbooks: After Happily Ever After (2River Chapbook Series) and The Storage of Angels (Slow Water Press). Her work is included in several anthologies: The Poets Grimm, (2003), Is This Forever, Or What?: Poems and Paintings from Texas, ed. Naomi Shihab Nye, (2004) and Letters to the World, eds. Moira Richards, Rosemary Starace, and Lesley Wheeler, (2007) and others. Her poems have appeared in 2River View, Salt River Review, Cider Press Review, Aquila, Bent Pin Quarterly and elsewhere. Further notes about her poems on line and in print appear on her website WendyTaylorCarlisle.com.