A Chill in the Air

A Chill in the Air
It’s cold outside today.
Winter snap,
like brittle branches dried and iced.
The latticework of trees are the only thing
holding the painfully clear sky together.
It’s unnatural for the city.
Nature has little dominion in the bastion
of concrete and steel,
of reflective glass that shows nothing,
playing tricks with permutations.

It’s cold without,
California coastal doing its best to be instead,
like I remember Port Angeles being in autumn.
No color here though, to soften the air’s bite.
Homesick for a place that was never home,
but more mine for that too-brief span of sunless days
and rain-soaked edges,
than any period of dwelling in this briar patch of birth.
Thorny problems and prickly answers notwithstanding,
there is a truth to tales of roots, heart-strings tangled in the soil.

It’s cold within.
Unfinished song words are the shape of thought,
faintly twisting with exhaled breath.
Cupped to warm chill fingers, pondered for the moment.
Then gone.
Wistful dreaming partners memory of sun and clean air
tinged with salt,
colored with indigo music as my voice pipes my legs to motion,
as my legs pushed me home on twin wheels.

It’s cold at work.
Jackets are uniform, and uniform jackets
are never warm enough.
Politics are an ugly business,
both sides warring, both sides wrong and right,
yet both coming to nothing.
The status quo carries anvils.
Stiff as windshield wipers over frosted glass,
yipping protest and remaining ever parallel.
Willow’s lesson goes unlearned by the dogwood.

It’s cold at home.
Faintly sad for reasons unuttered,
unutterable, tiny shards of a shattered stained glass.
Each too small on its own to bear explanation,
and sounding weak as needles, given voice.
Tragedy too common, broadcast aloud over every wave.
Pain is not a marvel.
No article, no headline, no movie and no radio show
will ever convince me otherwise.
Why others flock to spreading it I’ll never understand.

It’s cold in the city.
I never used to hear so many sirens.
It scares me that I’m starting to get used to them.
I can’t see sunsets anymore, or sunrises either,
though I catch the bus early enough
as the seasons change.
Skyscrapers create a new horizon, crowd out the clouds,
pen in the people, the noise, the lights that scuff out stars and moon.
My eyes hurt from artifice,
even as they are soothed by the beauty of old architecture.

I turn on the computer,
popping into virtual existence as is the norm.
This time though, I don’t remain.
A plate is cool against my fingers.
I microwave frozen burritos,
wrap myself in a blanket, settle on the couch.
I call the friend that I hadn’t found in imaginary spaces,
knowing she’s ill, and talk for hours to Oklahoma.
How are you feeling? Me? Fine.
It was cold outside today.