By Yocheved Friedman
Superball Sunday
People still have their Christmas lights out
I miss my grandfather
So American.
The end of football is the end of winter
***
Highway thinking
Single fluorescent lit billboards on the road
Finger tracing on frosted windows
Street lights staining my pajamas
Frost in Pennsylvania and the moon falling on the windshield
***
I hate melting snow
It is the constant reminder of passing time
Walking the sidewalks between melting ice caps
and the remanence of glaciation patterns.
Below a moon made of snow.
***
At some point, we reach the rains in the higher 20’s of Route 80.
It feels as if we have traveled through dimensions,
geographical gaps overseas where the dry land of Pennsylvania boarders the rain.
We are at the edge of one land and becoming part of another.
***
Sharing a lonely road with the 2 am drivers,
headlights between us
and the sense that we are the one ones left on the edge of earth.
There’s more to think about when you’re driving,
the trees running through my periphery inciting movements in my brain.
***
When it gets too late, perhaps somewhere deep into Pennsylvania,
drawing in and out of consciousness,
gaps of sleep with the fluorescence of the highway remnants on my retina.
Outside, on the lonely necks of Route 80,
ice is making glass skin on the arms of trees.
They resemble translucent membranes protecting a dying nucleus.
The only thing I want tonight,
the weight of winter ice clinging to my arms.
***
Feeling the concept of winter, the settling of snow,
slipping away.
The permanence of cold, the perpetuity of naked branches,
Ghosting when the sun emerges,
A weak, humming sound at first,
breathless from the sight of winter.
It’ll all be over soon,
maybe.
