Winter Storm

audio: Winter Storm
audio of Chris Fahrenthold's poem, Winter Storm

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Chris Fahrenthold

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.