A Thursday Afternoon

White wrapped world,
whirling snow sifts
off ice-clung roofs,
pale gray sky shorn,
piercing crystals sweep
sideways, all ways.

A figure wrestles wind
that chisels sweat-wet skin,
slips under her hood, through her hat.
It coils swift
frigid hands of metal cold
around her neck
where once lay weeping kisses
washed away in long, steaming showers,
sprays of perfume,
his restless hand rubbing a kink
that had settled there.

Winter shrieks through cracks,
a frosted window clatters,
the sound of large-grain sand flung
at a steel rocket slide in anytown park
when summer’s heavy, wet weight
strains the thin tissue of good humor,
sometimes splitting the translucent membrane
so the mean can boil out.

Snow drifts,
smoke under a pane of glass.
Day drifts,
frozen knocks of time
in the rhythm of the wind.