Solstice
Every Spring the ground bleeds through
the cold, paper world, and we find them,
the boys who couldn't make it home.
They lose themselves in flurries, fall through
thin ice or dig to the frozen end of the earth,
maybe wondering: where did it go --
the red clay, burning leaves, and asphalt sea?
This year will be the same. From my window
I watch them climb the hills plowed
in parking lots. They slide beneath
the slush or simply walk until they slip
into the envelope of ice. They'll come home
when sunlight shovels them out
and shows us what winter leaves behind.
You can't blame them for wandering off.
Winter just keeps happening,
and we are aimless under starless nights.
Claustrophobic and snowblind, I could
slit my wrist for a drop of color. Look.
Beneath my skin there must be more than bones.
But what about the neighbor boy lost last winter?
How his parents urged at every door,
trudged the street, shouldered shrugs and sighs?
Didn't we want them to give up
so we could take our tea in silence?
Our winter snowed them in their house,
while boys still sledded the lot, and I planted
words I hoped would sprout in Spring.
Days piled up in their yard. Newspapers
fell on their porch like footsteps, their only friend
stopping by to talk about current events, politics,
the weather: cold enough for ya?
I wanted more than frostbite, though I never
stopped to share their grief. I wrote his story
and mailed it out until I thought I had killed him
myself. It kept returning to me like pale, blue boys
who come to light, inch-by-inch beneath the ice.
But pretend it's Spring beginning, the start of a soul --
fingers, face, a body distinguished from the slush.
This page, I will fill up, send out; hope for my blood
to surface, for some stranger to stagger home; hope
to find more than silence, snow, empty mailbox.
