The winter is like a guest
that doesn’t leave.
It stays foraging for the last seed.
Lingers at the door
letting in the cold,
its dark sullen air
creeping across my feet,
chattering on
about one thing or another.
I wait for the end
of an interminable,
one-sided conversation,
my eyes becoming
porcelain pearls
frozen in place.
My mind lost on a glacier
at the end of the world,
with a catalog in the mail
advertising flowers.
The black rain that rinsed
summer off the fields,
put in a closet
with the gleaming mittens of frost
I rubbed on my cheeks.