This cold could burn the Galaxy,

each celestial body too far to gather fuel in earnest,

stranger still when met,

 

     my vehicle now adorned with tapestry of ice bars,

a thin cover of frost upon every window,

all limb and body and, the blood moves slowly -

sometimes inert as yet again I creak my head against

     a static enclosure at the top of spine; frozen like

          the setting of jelly gone too far.

 

     My scarf is woollen, my hat too but,

there happens now no temperature of comfort

   and no respite from the wind unto this duffel coat.

 

     It burns too much as it sears

each and every organ as it passes through beneath ribs

and blood, kidneys of disorder and liver too now only

staring at a pan that bares no welcome, the bacon too,

     frozen like a sea where, all marine knows no territory

to swim or bask, only;- a continuum of ground that shares -

          itself as cemetery – too cold still,

               for a match to beg a pyre.

 

     This is not yet here I whisper,

this is not yet here I mumble,

           this is not yet here, I state,

                 ‘THIS IS NOT YET HERE.’

 

     There are around me, a multitude of shoppers

with boxes from their credit cards,

     a gross and net of purse that has every bar upon

a fantasy – filled with hopeful forms we know as lost,

          the cars are queuing yet again and each – an

               extension of abodes we know as single occupancy,

                               ‘(those solemn booths of lonely tears)’ -

                    now even police, can no longer call themselves as ‘just.’

 

     I struggle in the midday sun to move my frozen mind,

I struggle more to accommodate the fifty years alone and hope,

          ‘one day, all this fake will thaw!’…………..

 

……........’(oh for ‘we’ to be in Africa, where smiles are real and still, our Sun, Our............love).’

 

 

Michael J Waite 29th October 2022.