Winter Tidings

Midwinter - means transparent ice walls pressed against shrinking skin. Dead-eyed horses are revived only by the steam of their nostrils. No one predicts a beginning or an end, 'mid' is a frozen idea in an ice-locked fountain pen, it will not write even in warm hands. Killer clowns' shelter behind their fixed, blood flaked grimaces, the whites of their eyes reflect pinpoints of a dawning apprehension. Roads decelerate, creaking through knuckled hands. Chilled mounds toboggan off rooftops, dump malformed snowmen through unmeasured backyard graves. At the hazy horizon of each grinding day. midwinter blurs perspective. This is the middling 'Mid' a middle where the mind stops flowing up or down.