November Time Slip

It snowed last night; taking out the trash, there I am, dozing in a garden swing set deep within July. It could be another year. July in a London park lying next to her, wisps of gentleness in a public place, dandelion seeds parachuting upwards. Snow falls onto my eyelids. The trash I am hefting is from Madrid there are straw hats and the ruins of several cathedrals in it. It should be heavier but the Iberian condors add a weightlessness to all things too heavy to bear across a snowy backyard asphalt. Chill bones rattle on the swing set, icicles weep from its wrought iron frame. She is singing in the kitchen, coral lips savoring what she has yet to cook. A skein of geese are crossing over heaped frozen spires. Summer shorts and a T rustle in a summer breeze, then freeze.