A Bear in Winter

No visitors, we make do.
The snow piles high.
The cats sleep.
I think I’m thinking,
but I’m only writing
words as they occur,
boring, as usual.
(I said “banal” once
only recently,
too soon to be so
formal again.)
Each winter I grow
until I break skin,
cold creeping under
my nails, my tongue.
I start telling everyone
I should go south,
where I was born.
No one takes me up on it.
I guess
there will never be
enough money
to travel.
I think I would get lost
riding freights,
hitching rides,
sleeping in ditches,
hungry as ever,
dissolute, reproachful
I started off this way
with only a destination
and no dinero.
The jails are warm
along the way, at least.
And somehow I endure
six months of each year
here mimicking a bear
nourished only by sleep.

(24 November 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander