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October Snow

With silent mouth I gasp, and reach for air,

my bursting lungs beneath the silver snow.

A shiver down my spine: a rotting branch,

still trembling here alone on frozen ground.

I sleep, alive (so far), with open eyes.

Contrails tearing up the winter sky.

With hint of blue, the white and glaring sky

is like a ceiling owning all this air.

The sun and daytime-moon: a pair of eyes.

A row of pearly teeth: the fallen snow

so coyly covers up the filthy ground.

Ashamed of every jutting, barren branch.

In dreams, I walk. Each path a fork, a branch.

A hope to see, once more, an endless sky.

A chance to stand with you on solid ground,

to speak with you and get to clear the air,

but no — I wake. My mouth is filled with snow.

My voice: a shrill and fragile sheet of ice.

I yield, as soon I tread upon that ice.

I fall and try to hold your offered branch.

My hope was scattered. Like the early snow

it flits about like flakes that dot the sky.

The empty space between it fills the air

but nonetheless it always falls to ground.

There’s no despair when I am laid to ground.

There’s only boredom in those tired eyes.

A broken radio’s static hums on air.

You give the grave a single olive branch;

a token, offered not to reach the sky

and not to shield my carven name from snow.

Horizon clear! A field of untrod snow!

Explorer’s bane, the winter rehides ground.

The stars make fools of those who trust the sky.

They realign their shiny needle eyes.

Each constellation lined with ìmplied branch.

The scales of Libra measure up the air.

I shiver, rubbing snow from both my eyes.

I grow, from seed in ground I’ve made a branch

that cannot feel the sky when stretched through air.