Deep Freeze

Late January and the sky is an icebox. The rind of a once fat possum litters a park path, It is not a place to linger. Ice pools gather, the water inside them grows grinding teeth. The jelled imprints of long dead leaves lace concrete, smear the soil. Outside the city park, hospitals and churches fume in snowy flurries. Walkers thread their way through trod-down streets. Still too early to tell if the land can be born again, yet we trust the slow march of these climatic moments, wait, for we must, for loitering shadows to throw the dice.