Day 12

second frost

you’ve seen winters worse than this
when the cold bleached your bones from the inside
out, and cats lost their ears asleep
against barns and trees, metal
fences, and their lives under
the ice of quick-frozen lakes.

this second frost in january
is nature playing at being fierce
in a country known for its damp and
mediocrity, where freezing is
an obligation on the poor like
raising taxes to benefit the rich;
it does work – look at the graphs
in overheated think-tank rooms where
bleary-eyed political advisers can’t
see or feel the ice, and plan more
genocide by stealth.

you’ve seen worse winters, snot frozen
solid the minute you stepped out of the door
wearing the right clothes to warm your core
and stop your heart from stopping,
but none have been as chilling
as this, when the second frost
has come so late everyone’s forgotten
the homeless and the hungry,
the ill and the desperate,
the always cold and dying,
because christmas was the time for giving,
and the new year’s the time for resolutions
not solutions.

there has never been a worse winter
to be in this new england.