Under the dying light,
snow blankets the land like
the white fur covering a rabbit,
the greying spruce look like
monoliths symbolising adages:
sayings of a bygone era
that make no difference to me
as I trudge, knock-kneed,
oblivious to the ticking clock.
I cling to nostalgia
like a melancholy psalm that
never finds catharsis,
the lines swallowing each other
with sharp regret,
the words their own enemy
without the need for a Saul waiting
in ambush, or an unrighteous
naysayer’s spiteful thoughts.
I remember mother
who held me
when emptiness just as
piercing frightened me
into thousand-yard stares
and speechlessness,
kindness empowered her
and love kept her going,
I struggled to reciprocate
her feelings, even though I
knew she knew that I loved
her, but that knowing
isn’t the joyous note that
ends this lament.
The wintry land
interspersed with a few
shrubs with niveous pinions
offers only bleakness
antithetical to that first awkward
kiss where I kept brushing
off a strand of my girlfriend’s hair
or that first blush of joy
with rosy effervescence promising
a future replete with
frankincense and myrrh.
I remember friends as I
continue in this land denuded of
life, a charcoal grey empty shack
with blotches of white
like chalk streaks on a blackboard
mourning in a corner,
they never cared or
if they did, I pushed them
away, drove them from
the balcony where I sat for
years, night after night,
smoking cigarettes, not even
allowing their faint essences
to illuminate a
corner of my mind and bring back
something lost. Now everything is;
there is nothing here
except the cold with its
claws raking me
tattooing my skin,
numbing me, pushing me
with a vigour that isn’t
zeal at all.
Ordinary Person 
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