A Thread of Winter sun sends frost into the grass and soil wind is waiting for the dog to drop the ball those late night moments when a stretch of freeway is empty and resents the next vehicle that comes through but the road can’t change fast enough to assert its will other times the freeway is so full and heavy nothing moves and the earth beneath it dreams of being a river and swimming inside itself as the river knows without dreaming that for much of winter, several threads of frozen water tangle through it, unable to cohere or slow anything yes heat rises, but in winter cold starts at the top walking to and from high school in winter, i could generate heat in the center of my chest and have it flow outwards, never spent enough time in heat to generate cold, or a wind that trickles out my pores not breath, a snack I can walk through legless walking, how this body could fly and land safely what if our solar system was too hot and we needed the opposite of the sun to make earth cool enough to live on what if the only places to live on this planet were at the equator, what new ways would we divide time, how would we vary our wardrobes, what would be peak vacation times, our birthdays would be our personal new years what if the only places to live on this planet were at the equator, would I get adventurous or systematically imaginative
About the Author: dan raphael’s poetry collection In the Wordshed will published by Last Word Press this November. More recent poems appear in Fireweed, Trampoline, Rasputin, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal and Unlikely Stories. Most Wednesdays dan writes and records a current events poet for The KBOO Evening News.
Image Credit: Ferdynand Ruszczyc “Winter Tale” (1904) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee
As It Ought To Be 