This Glass Box February encodes a heart of ruby fire. By serendipity I run into my mirror other: but she won't be stroked, has eyes green to amber. Chance & misfortune have thrown us together. This sky's pink is skinned bone. The dog's bark rusts his hinged jaw. In the Nickel Belt of Canada people are putting chains on their cars. Arctic outflow warnings. During the war we learned to move fast single-file, white socks on, heads bowed, checked for lice (the medieval head dreaming of angels was infected with lice.) We did as told: kept moving in one direction till we got there, whipcord-thin: by luck when I caught polio I was acrobatic, a letter from the Cyrillic alphabet, that lean. There was no walking away from no turning back. Silver tarnishes to antique black: I write, but never as hack, what grabs me, I grab it: and the wind gives everything a doomsday, emergency feeling: cellophane shrinks on the windows, ice is shattering. The compass draws its long silver arms in. |