Cold
All week it’s been cold,
with the sky as bright
as those electric blue eyes that
blaze out of that face to which
you are drawn irresistibly.
It’s a cold that holds your fingers like pliers.
Down the street, everyone
is wearing beanies
—some with oversized pom poms—
jackets worn with layers
like those layers of snow and ice
in places where you’d expect such things.
Some are cracking hardy, though,
in shorts and t-shirts, thongs or sandals,
and a baseball cap to shade their eyes
from that electric sky and cold-eyed sun.
Life has lost its intelligence,
its civility—so many are still wearing masks
against disease—and most are wearing
sunglasses, so all their faces are
bland and stupid, like robots
going about their robot doings.
We all go inside,
as quickly as we can,
so the warmth can manufacture
comfort, and civility, and intelligence
can appear under the lights
and bathe in the warmth
of the reverse cycle air-conditioning, and we can
pretend winter is just a feeble thing, outside.
