Weather Alerts for Spring
Sometimes ice melts
it’s easy to forget that it does
during the broad trunk of winter
after all the fuss it made, blustering
in like it owned the place, lolling
its blue strangled tongue over
the goose-pimpled skin of the city
like a loud brash penniless aunt making
bold declarations that the sauce lacks salt
slowing down our heartbeats with
its thick crystallized veins and holding
ransom the pulse of the trees and power
lines and cozy family dinners set
to match in Xmas sweaters
you’d have figured the ice was here to stay,
the new normal; that the glacial envelope skating
over the bleached bones you had buried deep
in the backyard would keep them from churning
up like emotions and heartburn and bat wings
in witches’ cauldrons and other unwanted curios
you got comfortable with coldness, didn’t you
acquiesced in acceptance of frigid temperaments
and thick slow moving moods, the blunting
of sensations and sensualities numbed
with freezer burn — ‘cause you’re too afraid
to be drowned
and swept away again
when the heart drips wet at the hesitant
tender slaps of an unforeseen body , warm
as a radiator, the hot water bottle
you are afraid to embrace
Sometimes ice melts
it’s easy to forget that it does
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