The big chill...

Frozen World

Rain spattering on the sidewalk
An empty soda can rolls and clanks
Against the wet pavement,
Moved by a cold, curling finger of wind
To the other side of the street,
Where it becomes inert at the curb,
Its sporadic dance is over.
Will it now be washed away
Into the sewer if these rains don't cease?
The last of lifeless leaves, dangle precariously
From a tree made bare in preparation
To be "fitted and dressed"
By winter snows.
Its branches stark, sparse, prickly
Reaching vainly upward,
So black against a pale, gray sky
Like ebony, skeletal hands, scratching
Frantically in the air, as if
Giving up "the ghost" of life
They knew only weeks before.
When arrayed in summer's green,
They held homes built by various birds
That have since flown away,
Departing for their "vacation nests"
In balmy, tropical destinations.
Those same branches,
Bedecked in brilliant oranges and reds,
That were so gloriously resplendent
Against a crisp, brilliant blue Autumn sky
Now hold only a few brown,
Withered leaves, clinging feebly
In futile desperation
To those dark, long, black, damp fingers
As if waving a sad and lonely goodbye
To a cruel, gray world.
As a brutal, biting bone-aching chill
Begins to seep through my
Too few layers of clothes,
My heart pierced and shattered
By news I never thought I'd hear.
I shiver,
Feeling more alone and afraid than ever.
No one knows the pain that has
Stabbed my heart,
The near suffocation of shock,
Making it so laborious,
So painful to breathe.
Gasping out a forlorn prayer,
From lips long ago
Turned blue from the cold.
On this face where frozen tears
Fall silently and mingle with the rain
That my friend,
Would be the world everyday -
A perpetual "shadowlands"
Of desolation gray -
Though not nearly as lonely,
As desolate, as lifeless, as cold,
As monotone, as painful, or as chilling
As the world without...

The Eucharist.


susie melkus
02.18.07
©