December 26, 2025
Time is frail
At the butt end of the year.
The past with its freezing breath
Flutters in the wispy drapes
Of drafty windows.
Thin as a snowflake
Is the space between then and now,
Our skin chapped and cracked
From the year's thousand raw abrasions,
And sleet like death-iced fingerbones
Skitters on the glass.
And so we hunker,
We frightened chipmunks
Clinging to what softness we can hoard
In our squalid burrows,
As we wait to find if the future holds
A flowering thaw,
Frantic stuffing for hungry cheeks
And a balm for frost-nipped paws
Or else the icy talons
And the silent swoop
Of night-borne wings.