Winter Storm
Winter Storm
The neighbor’s bamboo has become ours now
a chain-mail negligee of two days’ frost
has warped a glistening bower over the fence.
Bowing treetops touch the ground exposing
the icy black bough of a power line,
and we too are exposed, our hollow green
trellis of solitude bending down
in dereliction to show our neighbors
ourselves. While underneath parade the prince
of cats, some squirrels, and a christening dog.
The icy wizard hand that overnight
molded the trees into their genuflection
will soon relent, and buoyed up by faith
the leaves will rise. But the earthbound habit
acquired in the quiet dark, a thorn
in the flesh born of crystal dalliance
with the silver glass lawn portends an end.
The schools closed, the city on salt patrol
has seen the wire in the leaves’ slow ascent,
and trucks will come when children are away
to execute our neighbor’s wall, our own.
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