Cold

Day drags into night
light still peaking in
through the window

dark cold thoughts
settle like icicles
hanging on gutters

you wouldn’t know
that it’s summer
and the air is easy

droplets don’t hit
snow on impact
nor frozen asphalt

they evaporate to
dusk that settles
comfortably, slowly

my mind shuts tight
brain freeze sting
I can’t hold it.

Wolf Lamb

Eastern pasture rises gently
meeting sun before cloud cover;
grazing weed and wildflower,
he’s not immediately known.


On haunches, tongue grazing cold springs,
his ear raises toward her industry;
do you ever tire of the hill
and miss the rustling sounds of wood?


The wood always stands stoically
as the field’s guarded radius,
shadows tempt any innocence
to enter its willful darkness.


But I do not live among trees,
I’ve not the taste for pine needles,
nor the canopy of towering
oaks protecting mossed ground from light.


The wolf continued his query
to draw the lamb into his game,
distorting his true intention
to only engage her for sport.


His fierce fangs would not tear her flesh
to feed the incessant desire
left lately by the last lamb’s bleed
that had failed to satisfy him.


He was anticipating next,
honing his seductive technique
that would distract whoever saw
nothing in the advances he made.


This lamb saw under the fur coat
wanting to pull the heart from it,
to savor adrenalized beats
of an animal not her own.


She pulled the coat over her quick,
touched the neck at the jugular
and pulled his skin across her wool,
his blood filling the spring that drowned.

Pause

Larry’s Dad died last week
before the tour started;
now he has gone back out
on the road banging skins;
I think he is the age
when it seems parents die.


Not too remarkable:
a lifetime comes and goes-
we don’t always recall
the last time together;
rolled up in emotion,
rolling in memory fog.


But it will come sometime,
it isn’t far away
in a distant moment
I’m not quite ready for;
better not sit and wait,
it may just get me too.