February

A Pharaoh Ant crawls its way across the brown cracking skin
of a tree it met yesterday.
The surrounding evergreens sway in stoic witness.
Their sticky pine forming lava flows of semi-transparent tributaries.

Not all snow colors are created equal,
The red a scarlet slash of injustice;
of violence and fear and loss.

Our repetitive footsteps grind grit and gravel,
down down down to the blacktop of our font door.
Melted runoff snakes through the waterlogged planks of the porch.
A dripping roof concealing a hidden fortress of reflective pools,
where we can smoke in peace.

Memories form a mirage refracted in the puddles of forgotten snowmen,
and the women who made them great.
Come now, away from this place of haunted backyards,
of unbaptized snow which will never again known the joy of destructive paw prints.