Winter Lips

I felt the bite of winter on my tongue

in a new way cold

like an arrangement of steel

a new necessity

cold on my tongue

cold and sour

tempered

soured with repetition

with new repetition.

 

And when I am walking

I begin to think of continuous things

of ways and habits

and of the spirits that speak of them

and are the caretakers of them

and I give them voices, these spirits:

“Why has he gone that way?”

“Can’t you see it’s because of the traffic?”

“I thought he was going to cross”

“But he didn’t”

“Because of the traffic”

“Because of the traffic.”

 

This winter is opening

onto a sourness

of limited choice

an acquired taste, perhaps:

hesitation

indecision

there is a bite to it

a vulnerable promise

of hidden things

that must not come asunder

quenched things

retained in darkness

held.

 

Held until

until the season warps again

and yet older instructions

are remembered

and followed

and I will be forced to bear

their rightness

if not their beauty.

 

This winter bears strange gifts

I think

and I wonder if I can read

in its milky eye

a kind of friendship.

 

A kind of friendship

with less contempt

in its familiarity.

 

 

Winter Lips © 2017 Fergus Deffely