Winter's Heat
“Don’t fall for a man
with shiny shoes,”
she told us,
gin and tonic in hand,
decades left-over smokey southern voice.
Five o’clock sharp
she sat in the wingback
looking over us at iced-over windows,
as far from the South
as fading blue-grey eyes,
and memories swirling in a glass
could hold close.
She had married-
and lost-
a good New England man
who winters had spread salt on the icy path
and kept the children
-her daughter sitting there now-
warm in jackets, heavy socks and scarves.
Dinner, then
plates and glasses always put away
same order, same places,
forty years.
We sat,
patiently, unwarned,
waiting to be dismissed,
and steal away into winter’s heat,
unaware of whose reflections
or future
we were in.
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