Miles Waggener – Ⅳ

Winter Invective 

 

 

 

 

Metal keeps cracking in the blood, bringer

of bubbling loam that freezes beneath yellow lawns,

brimming the lids of houses, and you the blind hand

reaching in mid-slip for a hand rail

along cold steps.  You broke it, you cipher.

Your empty circle that your unwelcomed heft

pencils in.  Children in the hard chairs they think you give them

turn to stone when you speak.  A rush of air, your

voice whistles its spool of twine, and the time

is gone.  Rolling over the sharp objects of fever sleep,

you become a glue ball of glass bits–photographs,

home movie reels– reefs long dead and pocked,

each socket hosting its dream, memory re-fielded

with missing friend or father or a gravel drive, cracked

asphalt and old car, foothills glittering

from a chilly height–marble pavilions they say

mean yours truly crumble while you’re inside them.

Granter of paw prints, not quite an afterglow,

snow having steeped memory, ether burning off,

why say you memory maketh the man?  You, shoddy

translation you read and are.  A new memory

maketh a new man– softly sloping decline of

greenish lights, umbral divots where a dog

squats to maketh a steam hole–your spoken word

revoked.  In the dank interior is a street-lamped

childhood dream of safety, whose holes are filling in.