Dross

The dross

                  of a winter storm,

                  a pale sky veiled

                  behind a curtain

                  of wind-blown snow

                  swirling,

          cast off,

turns
          crystalline in the morning sun.

Guilt

In the silence of a dark night

the world shrinks to only what I can hear,

night sounds, un-embodied, without form

except what fancy my mind creates lying there,

the covers pulled close and tight to shelter me

from the cold and from what I fear,

what I know is there, hidden in the darkness.

That bump in the night falls heavy, somewhere,

unexplained, and the shadows beneath my bed

creep out and crawl along the wall, rising

to the ceiling and watching me, staring,

yellow-eyed, or slinking down the back stairway

to stir loose the floorboards, creaking

now as they did when I ascended, climbing late

and careful not to wake those who slumber,

nor those who wait my presence, a light turned off,

a jostled bed signaling them to rise, to dance

and shriek, their footfalls thumping around me

or soft on the carpet of my room, silent now and dark,

a scurrying begun in the walls and ceiling

and dreams that haunt my restless sleep.

Art Lessons

She tried to teach me to draw

once, a gift of charcoal

and a sketchbook, a gift of love,

but my doodling never progressed past that,

just doodles drawn in a math class

I couldn’t master, either, broad circles

and lines and shapes resembling nothing

but what they were, circles and lines

and shapes, doodling, trying to draw

what I couldn’t picture, couldn’t understand,

didn’t know, the various shades and shadows

and light cast, giving form beyond a doodle.

Love was like that, too, shades and shadows,

light cast, giving it a form I couldn’t grasp.

The Flagger

Clad in neon he stands alone

by the side of the road,

twirling his signal from STOP to SLOW,

exercising the power conferred on him

over us hurrying from here to there

or back again, our daily businesses,

impatient with the delay, with him.

It’s a lonely job, human contact

but his twin on the other end, connected

by a crackly voice on a radio wave,

shared power to move us orderly along,

or the friendly wave of a driver

tipping his hand, the wild hands

of a child safely ensconced in the back seat.

He waves back, perhaps, or not,

this person standing here alone, hopping

to stay warm on a cold winter’s day,

or gulping water while we drive by

in the heat of a summer afternoon, air conditioned.

And at the end of his day, what does he think,

what does he say about a job well done,

the impatience of drivers drumming their fingers

or checking their watches while he watches, too,

fidgeting, impatient to pass, hurrying on.

It’s a paycheck, the rent money, and perhaps

a burger he splurged on, a cold beer and fries,

for we do what we do, what we have to do

to get by, to occupy our time in our own passing,

waiting, impatient as the drivers he meets,

for what’s to come next, dreaming as he waits

for us to move through, move on,

twirling his signal to SLOW, for slow it is,

standing here, dreaming and waiting.