Knowing friends must someday part

after Michael Symmons Roberts

So much snow, held in the lattice

of red-framed panes. We can’t see through.

 

Obliterated by whiteness

all shape is lost, all features blurred.

 

Shivering, waiting to connect.

You could suppose a frozen corpse

 

entombed, there in that icy box,

receiver held in frost-bound hand.

 

Against the door a driven weight.

I lever it open, stick-thin

 

slide inside. The after-blizzard

silence amplified, colder still.

 

Breath like cinnamon. Fix my grin

I say – take a close-up. It will

 

never change, even when we do.

iv. 2025

‘Get Me Another Heart This One's Been Broken Many Times’

after Valerie Maynard (1995) 

Inside this tired flesh, hard to please

or satisfy, there are doors beyond our counting.

Locked. No matter how many keys

 

we swallow – whether sacred hosts

or miracle pill – the angel of history turns

their face away, gives up no ghosts.

 

You claim there is no other life.

But through your ribcage I have seen the evidence,

my radiograph a woken knife

 

exposing hinterlands unmapped.

Puritan, reach out, with your stiff hand grasp 

friendship’s purpose. 

                                    Release what is entrapped.

 

 iv. 2025