Portrait Of Winter

WINTER IN FAYETTE


November, we walked through corn

fields knotted with dry stalks and dust.
You threw flat stones
that sailed through the air
paper planes carried on wings
of sparrows in Autumn song.

You saved my poems on brown paper
for lyrics, pasted over blue
walls near Clemson's moon sketch.
A chime set of glass notes
twisted red in the afternoon breeze
reflecting music on my hands.

A spattering of snow
fell on your sagging barn,
skeleton of cardboard walls.
During winter the air has a song
of its own, you said, and called
out my name to hear it bounce
off hills, touch the moon

and fall back through naked trees
with sleeves of ice. In my hand
a sparrow's skull, paper thin.
I held it up, looked at the moon
through hollow sockets,
heard you calling my name.


FROM THE DISTANCE OF WINTER


No snow crusting Smith's pond
the sun's weary eye across the water
if I could touch its frozen lip
I'd feel the trees inside you
trembling before the first snow
wind tugging at the last, few leaves.

Once your house was thick with night
mattress pulled to the living room floor
your fingers on me like rain
swallowing the moon's perfect light

the distance I have wedged between us
highway markers falling past my rearview mirror
the road unfolds its dark fingers
from prayer, returning me home
to thoughts of you and the thin lines of love
found in the cusp of a broken moon.