The earth is littered with the dead.

There is the myth that you’re never given

More than you can take . . .

Here is winter, throwing hook to skin

With each wretched blast, eyebrows

Caked in drizzle, the very sort of

Frosting I despise . . .

I can’t quite shake the cold from these bones

Or darkness from whatever passes for soul. . . .

Boxing Day 2022. As I write this, I am boxed in, stuck inside the house thanks to a couple of inches of new snow that fell this morning, topping off a layer of ice that’s been with us since Winter Storm Elliott moved in Thursday night. . . .

Rousing from my slumber

Christmas afternoon on the couch

To contemplate the text

At hand . . .

With the first snowflake . . .

The light is slow this morning, creeping up

The sky an inch or two at a time

What a dismay

To waste a day

Stuck in bed . . .

Sitting on the patio, the honeyed light of late October

Spilling over me like a glass of pinot grigio as the day

Melts into evening . . .

3 A.M.

Only my hand

is asleep,

but it’s a start.

—Billy Collins, “3 A.M.”

What the mind

keeps, it keeps.

—Andrea Cohen, “Roosevelt Dargon”

As if on cue, a northwest wind is blowing in

To turn these short sleeves long.

How the hell did it get to be September?