a breather
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on a breather from this bonus day i watch the long-awaited snow show up. it falls in stop-motion frames, posing perhaps for my photo, which never turns out and isn’t worth sharing at all. per the plan, i was to be airborne, convention-bound by 8am. instead i was given a bonus day: to eat one more home-breakfast, enjoy one more slow work day alone, squeeze in one more sleep perchance to feel a bit more peace before leaving once more. i snatch them up: twenty-four extra bunches of sixty-minute bouquets, sweet with seconds that would otherwise be frozen by the snow – heavy, wet, and hardly worth the mess – a welcome surprise.
a late just write contribution.
february away
february looms like a tidal wave, just out of sight.
i can feel him swell and roll, closer now still,
a fighter held back in his corner, waiting for the bell.
with the calendar flip, he’ll be released at last,
to charge and roll and come at me hard
with all he’s got.
and all i’ve got,
are 9 home days, the rest away,
washed out to sea with the suit-clad crowd,
a seatbelt sign, fluorescent lights.
with every checked bag,
another big picture view
of the rockies, mystery cities, your neighbor’s pool.
from 6D and 10A i squint sun-side to search,
i’m always and ever just looking for home.
linking up: just write
furnace speak
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the furnace is out,
after weeks creak-and-moaning,
telling in gusts of fire-scented air,
the stories of this house.
in the week before his replacement arrives,
we pull blankets from their chest.
they smell of winters past and layer the years,
one after another, thennowandtocome,
on my shivering lap.
i want to stay buried, to remember the weight,
to save up the chill in some cold sacred place,
and redeem it mid-summer,
when the heat forces forgetting,
and i start to believe i’ll never know winter again.
just write!