Degan Davis
Winter
The past is a drug you swallow
again and again—the present
the long cold morning after: shivers
and shaking, your bones
thirsty and wanting. You’ve fallen in love
with longing, that old moon,
the streets which held her footsteps,
the curve of her feet. Listen—
you can hear her climbing to the roof
of your mind, one rung at a time.
Pin-prick past, a brief needle, a rush
of sun through latticed windows: her pale
shoulder under a mauve blanket. One slip
of her voice and the quick dark toxin
is in. But winter has no memory.
So wait for the amnesiac snow,
the light fall of forgetting, the white
fresh streets waiting for a new set of tracks.
0 2nd Prize, Poem of the Year Contest 2007
Arc 59, Winter 2008
Arc 59, Winter 2008
