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Emily Dickinson
The Frost of Death was on the Pane --
"Secure your Flower" said he.
Like Sailors fighting with a Leak
We fought Mortality.
Our passive Flower we held to Sea --
To Mountain -- To the Sun --
Yet even on his Scarlet shelf
To crawl the Frost begun --
We pried him back
Ourselves we wedged
Himself and her between,
Yet easy as the narrow Snake
He forked his way along
Till all her helpless beauty bent
And then our wrath begun --
We hunted him to his Ravine
to see simply
beyond all words
rendering every body wonderful
to meet others as I find myself
with ash for dinner and a little hope
the frost will break
night like a bruise
goes away again
now the change from frost
to a great rain
the dirt was our ship
lost beneath the frost
I find myself in cold weather
begin to burn all over
Yesterday afternoon, I picked and ate a ripe cherry tomato from my garden. For those who shuddered at my report of an early snowstorm two weeks ago, the real news here is the unprecedented lateness of a frost. Those white shooting-stars that were bent down by the snow? They’ve put out new blossoms.
It’s hard what to know what to make of it all, but this much I can tell you: the tomato was delicious.
Deep in the weeds,
the wrong shade of red for autumn:
last ripe tomato.
how like a fine frost
my prayers fall on her ear
what ingratitude
the poor words of a liar
words that should stay private
expressed in rust
A morning with fine,
clear frost.
Winter makes us fear,
drink, bet,
sin better and spend
time lost.
morning frost
pain in my bladder and the drawn
face of my wife
frost white
on the gibbet
the grammar out here in the country
is buttery as lard
Frost soldiers receive dark company: that dead lady, Money.
They all called home and found me.
perhaps one wouldn’t
call it metamorphosis
the shift of sandstone
back into sand
prized free by frost
or fungal enzymes
grain by grain more gradual
than an hourglass
though so much
less reversible
but why only prize changes
made under pressure
it’s years of weather
that unfather us
daily hammer blows
that shape our addictions
just one drink
catching a cranefly
in mid-air
how many months now
since I’ve held someone
missing you
the morning after
a hard frost
breath measured out
in small white clouds
buzzing
what the rattlesnake sees
in infrared
ah just to touch
that velvety skin
floating leaves