Four Winter Poems Shoveled Out of Snowy Archives

I am in a slump. Attempts at new poems look more like words piled up in messy mounds. Unlike the cluttered drifts of toys in the kitchen corner and living room rug, there is no fun behind my word piles. Just confusion and frustration. For now. The few free minutes I have tomorrow, yesterday, and when? have not been enough for me to sort through my thoughts.

So while I wanted to have new sonnets written by now, I don’t. Instead, the second major snow storm of the year has inspired me to shovel out poems I have written about winter and snow.


Inside Winter

This is to toes lazy and snug inside red flannel slippers,
bones lost in looseness of gray cotton sweats.
Silver radiators rattle and hiss.
Coffee steams in my faded thermo-mug,
knees and nerves bounce to caffeine
and the jittery Monk improv on “Nutty” –
trills and staccato chords swiftly falling
and drifting like white flakes
speeding down in a blizzard haze.
Feet tap, pen scribbles across the page.
I become part of this rhythm, lost in keys,
a note in a chord, a single snowflake.
Feel like a small note in layers of compositions,
somehow part of worlds beyond walls.
Outside the windows, branches bend to the wind,
icicles hang from wires, highways stretch into colorless skies.
Beyond these bricks and boroughs, more worlds.
And within all this, I am sitting in a wooden armchair
under a circle of lamplight,
drifting in and out of Monk tunes –
small as the fine-point pen in my hand,
wrapped inside layers of winter.


Pomegranates in Winter

Tired of lying in frost
she seeks heat in the mahogany room
where congas split cold air into Antilles

and trombones shine like solstice.
She undresses stiff February branches
drapes the equator around her shoulders

as rhythms enter her and undulate
like the sheen of desire.
White threads of smoke

exhaled from her lips
wrap her in a chiffon cocoon
and transform her into tropic weather.

The man whose warm hand she recalls
when she lies in glacial darkness
reaches in and thread by thread

unravels the white fabric around her
takes her hand, whirls her
onto the dance floor. Bodies entwined

they sail into boleros
sway to string solos, pebbles shake in their hips
the words gardenia y corazón falling

like ivory petals upon their skin.
She is porous and thirsty
wanting to drink syllables

from his tongue
wanting to plunge
into his shoreline

taste his fruits
wanting to take his pomegranate
lips, peel them, melt the seeds

in her mouth. If only she could lie
in these latitudes
degrees away from winter devotion

without the weight of wool
and the branches
hissing in the wind.


Once Upon a Snowy Night

blizzard snow spins
a spell
on the night scene
jewel flecks haloing
street lamps
lighting lashes darkness split
into spectrum
dainty white sprites
feather the tongue
as we taste
the sky
and its moods
bitterness
of northern sierras
aggravated fronts
from the south
conceive
crystallize
shine
mask the weathered concrete
trash trails covered
in white dunes
a fairy tale
written into the city’s
gray pages – this
the happily
ever after
of our timelocked
wage-measured
keyboard ticking hours
time to curl up
under a worn-out fraying quilt
listen to and watch
the million acrobats
s k i p p i n g
c a r t w h e e l i n g across
fire escape steps
and rooftop ledges
dancing to
harmonies of
winter
woodwinds.


F Train over the Gowanus in the Core of a Blizzard

Snowflakes puddle on coat shoulders and forearms then stream down and drip from sleeves and elbows. Around thinsulated boots, steps liquefy into gray. Wet diamonds glisten on knit hats. Outside white jazzes down to Mingus’s II B.S. In the beginning, bass alone emerges from a solitary place like solitary legs walking into the streets until joined by rows of feet and legs moving to the same jolt of the train. The snow and Mingus, wide melodic reach, fingering chords across Brooklyn panorama, the blast from between sliding doors at Smith and 9th sweeping through, swirling snow drifts into our eyes where horns rise up, some taking turns with an aside, some in harmony, all elevating me to bodiless bridges where highways and rooftops dissolve. Tonight we look up from our laps, recalling the flakes we caught with our tongues, calves awakened from trudging through snow heaps, wear the train’s warmth like a blanket, knowing these insulated rides are easily forgotten when we enter unweathered tunnels and return to the singularity of our selves. Even though the whirling snow limits the sight, shrouding the waxing moon, there are no limits to the expanse of sound and the breath that exhales from outside the doors.