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Ten Ways to Awake in January
You’re a hollow tree, listening
to the tapping claws of am exposed sky.
You sit sideways staring over your shoulder.
A rib cage full of naked troglodytes
looks up into your throat.
Wintery seas leak over ice-bound rooftops.
Bedsheets come to rest as snowdrifts.
You find yourself observing the world
through the top of your head.
You find yourself reading
the pale blue veins on a frozen window.
Roads might be passable. Wind-whales plow through,
pushing insomnia ahead of them.
The cold is a color yet to be decoded,
but you breathe through it, red tongue
slipping through clouds of needles.
You count crow-calls, shiver when they stop.
The passage between you and the chill floor
is umbilical, you may have to bear down.
You skirt the edges of yourself,
until your mind thaws beneath parked cars.
Copyright ©
Eric Ashford
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