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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Standing in the Cold

My winter pages are white as snow.
The solitude of winter takes my words away.
I stand like a tree, still and bemused.
Turning my eyes, watching the boys play.
Like winter squirrels scratching
at the ground.
Fashioning little planets,
throwing them into free-fall
without a sun to catch them.
I am content to be where I am,
a part of wind and cold,
of gray peace in the clouds.

Time was, I was a boy.
I was a hare hopping about.
I shouted and screamed like a crow.
I dived at the whiteness like a lynx.
Now I am thought.
The knife edge of a cold blade.
The blackness inside a white well.
I have changed.
I am evening,
I am distance.
A wisp of warmth exhaled from my lungs,
ignited by the cold.
Content to be quiet,
outside a poem.

Published inIndex of all Poems