Slate of Orange (Winter)
Under the first daunting slate of orange
I scrape the ice from my windshield,
my lungs ripping the last bits of moisture
from the air. Finishing, the slate seemed to flash
green before blue subjoined then sustained.
She's arrived. Summer's lost mistress.
Slipping in like would a snake a mouse hole;
unnoticed and ready to bite. She threatens
the blue slate with a fiercely quantum increase
of slathering unsaturated clouds.
Losing doesn't exist in patterns of winning.
She'll win. Her ice teeth loom on gutters
while children, clumsy in their bundles,
ecstatically drag neon sleds beneath; gleaming.
She's a vexatious howling beast. Truly.
The electric-aluminum gray slate
lingering gorgeously like a wedding dress,
endlessly inviting, taunts just weeks away.
Driving through construction, I think
of my brother's passing. January.