Midwinter

This is the last poem I wrote before I switched all my focus over to writing longer stuff, and although we’re a little past midwinter, it seems appropriate now that the snow is showing itself.

In the kitchen we peel oranges, grapefruits:

globes like handheld suns, hurling

defiant brightness against midwinter, sharp

tang of citrus on laughing tongues.

Outside, December howls. Its steel mouth

will rend and swallow, and fill the void

with wind, with crackling stillness. Tick-tick

of snow in silence, each flake a star

that falls, giving no light, while dusk, eager

as a new lover, reaches impatiently for dark.