February
Ice Storm
by
Doris Lynch
Eighty-four
years ago, your first--
another
century, another world.
Horsecarts
clattered over cobblestones,
fruit
& vegetable men yodeled to housewives,
urging
them to buy winter carrots and cabbages.
On
Allegheny Avenue flappers wove,
their
hair newly cropped, sequened dresses
shining
with sun. Scarfs, capped
with
fox faces, draped ivory necks.
Another
February--your birthday--
you
lie cocooned in a hospital bed
in
Crystal River’s Emergency Room
across
from the twin-headed nuclear
plant
that buttresses the Gulf of Mexico
while
a phone call away, Indiana
hail
hisses and trucks disgorge
salt
onto Highway 45.
There
is no safety
for
any of us: not drivers
skidding
from tiger-stripe
to
bike lane, not doctors
carefully
scanning your MRI,
not
black lab sprawled, legs akimbo
on
glazed lawn beneath the lone cardinal
seeking
shelter in crystalline hedgerow.
Ice
comes from a mysterious place
called
cloud, None of us can see through
or
beyond it. But isn’t it enough when sky
timpanis
music? That we tilt
faces
up, mouths open
like
baby starlings, and tiny shards
enter
and melt on our tongues.
About
Doris Lynch:
She has work recently in the Tipton Poetry Journal, the Atlanta
Review, Frogpond, Haibun Today, and Contemporary Haibun Online. The
Indiana Arts Commission awarded her three individual artist’s
grants: two in poetry and one in fiction.