I get tons of gorgeous abstract art and photos in my RSS feeds every day, and for the longest time I've been promising myself that I'd sit down, open up a ton of my favorites in tabs, and then write a poem that's visually inspired by them. Tonight I finally did that. Here is the result:
* * *
Frostbite
Tiny ice crystals coat each narrow branch
that grows tentatively from the tree
where our initials were never carved.
It's a soft freeze--
barely perceptible
to the naked eye,
but that thin layer of frozen dew
has been enough to hinder movement
for seventeen long years.
If you walk a little further,
down to the ocean's edge,
you'll find the places
where entire waves
have frozen mid-splash.
A few steps up the beach--
the house--with the room
where we skirted destiny.
I can no longer enter--
if I did, I'd have to creep in
just as silently as we did then,
and today, I'd be alone.
These spaces,
no matter how well loved,
no longer belong to us.
Through the bright white noise
there are dark and lonely cries,
each time a bit more desperate
than the time before.
These too are subject to the frost;
haunting digital frozen waves.
Wouldn't some
coffee and cigarettes
melt it all away?
All the snow,
all the distance,
all the years of waste.
If your smoke curled
around my latte mug
while you laughed
at the things I'd say.
But no matter how much I lament these
scratches in my iced-over rear view mirror,
I understand somewhere deep down
that I am better for the damage.
More real; more human.
Much more loving; so much changed.
And still, the water flows toward you.
Even uphill it will make its seasonal trek.
One day it will be warmed by sunlight
instead of solidified by the cold.
Tonight I settle into the shiver;
the frostbite taking me over.
photo credit: Ctd 2005 on Flickr