by Yocheved Friedman
Winter is
Only the warm memories
Wind that tastes like mint and ice
Burning nose tips and finger tips.
Ground tealeaves and maple candy
Sticky on the insides of knitted things.
Ice-rains in Vermont and
Snow deer up in Maine.
The texture of frost melting on wood
Absorbing into shrill winds and
Crusty memory banks.
Cold pulsing through floor panels
Bones, blue teeth.
Pine needles that beckon snow
To silent mountain tops
Purple shadows that stain the snow of Narrow villages
Smoke that burns the sky white.
Car windshields blinded by frost
On the drive upstate
For a long weekend home
During the holidays.
Leftover Thanksgiving pie
Winter desserts dusted by sugar
To resemble snow
The sounds of low refrigerator hums
And the last five minutes of Football games
Blaring while the snow outside is silent.
Many wolves howling at invisible moons
Where pine needles prickle the silhouette of lonely sky.
Winter is the season of window-shopping
Snow boots padding rainy streets and
Deep, subtle colors in catalogues.
When it snows, the world looks like
The inside of a mental asylum’s
White space filled by falling cold.
Trees that web the sky in knobby fibers
That wrap the winds into eddies.
Winter is being the last one left.
It’s the only time when the wind-gusts Outside take up all of the sounds.
It’s the feeling of being still
In the white noise
And the sky being unified with the snow-ground.
Walking in dystopian fields, feeling lost and all together strange.
Forgotten by the cold and where
The sun has entirely drowned.
