Uncertainly Placed

This land is played out on a plain bible.
Nightlights smear a frigid fog, the fumes of idling cars.

A flat-lined wind plies its wheezy bellows through burrowing bones,
smothers the distance, douses the glint of rural glimmers.

Knuckled chills know how to fang a wrist,
nip tender tongues, freeze the rivers run.

Here in the burbs the lights of bistros cannot withstand
their own desolate backyards. A scree heap of black curb
is not crossed by the lightly shod but must be booted-in and leveled.

At such times, winter lends a shivering hand
at its own burial. We become priests all frocked in fleece,
heads bowed or we howl a tune to a faceless moon.

Good or gone to the bad, we are there, in Ohio, anywhere.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2021

Poem

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