FROZEN

It came like this…I thought the ice was trying to tell me something.
My whole weekend full of suffused and glittering light, battered by its brilliance, and the best any of us could come up with is, "It sure is pretty out there."

All the branches the leaves tree trunks windows clock faces
encased in ice, a world of frozen blossoms, a world remade,
brittle, temporary...
We walked and slid in clumsy pirouettes across its smooth
and stiffened skin, the flecked-off fragmented stars
stared down, spinning and spinning, and the cold empty
sky opened as my mouth opened, full of purple breath bruises,

pushed out, set aflame.