Amulet (Midwinter)

Amulet (Midwinter)


All day rain returns snow
to lawn and asphalt.

Potholes mirror
the low sky’s
dead eye—

gray glare
without variation
in a variable wind.



*



Iced-over branches graph 
the oncoming gloam;

the deepening blue

I mistook for dawn
drawn between overlapping lines.


*


A ritual silence dissolves night 
into day, ballasts me
to the room

bludgeoned 
by winter’s nothing.


*
 


Traffic’s shadow wobbles 
on the far wall. In the window

a garland of late gulls struggle 
to cleave a shape from the cold.