THE COLD TAKES US

Here where the ground opens gaps in thinking.

You know. The “X” on the grid—

cages at times, the wrought-iron cell, restricts closure.  

Water thrown skyward spins frozen sparrows—

their wings snaring glints of light, glistening ice, layered iridescent,

summoning the lost sun home into memory’s wingspan.

The morning before yesterday’s morning—

a day I can’t catch in the silver fish net I sewed

with teal opalescent thread throughout the long night of hushed confusion,

so I could watch the platinum angel fish—watch me,

their black flattened eyes, coins of an ancient fallen city

that can no longer purchase the sea’s reflection—

an etched dream morphed into massive rock, obsidian,

clinging frozen—earth slanting into sink holes—

and I couldn’t reach the wind’s ethereal canvas.

I was attempting to ballet dance with syllables,

sculpt the elusive quarter-moon, represent

the tumbling snow on an oleaginous surface

shifting solace away from itself,

the crisp winter air ripping through my dwindling skeleton.

Did you happen—to see me?

The “I”s have it.

All the—time.

We must all confess—to imperfection’s diligence

charting ingrained woes in chalk against obscurity—

inviting the ghosts of the house—who erase our words—

jealous we can speak them.  

Their shrinking eyes follow from revolving door to door—

Room to room of Russian dolls, Chinese boxes

of our callous obsessions.

Their thick eyelash-fringe, onyx velvet cilia, garnering dust.

Threadbare—invocations to bruised gods disintegrate

when they touch your dry, paper-thin lips

that no longer taste the sea’s perfection.

Yes, that was me on the mountain plateau—

waving a white sheet—flag—

conceding to fate’s uncertain footage.

That was me—beseeching thousands of shards—of intricate star

to save me—and You and you and you and yours—

and those hiding in corners to garner—answers

unequivocal—gathering themselves—

cradling the frozen sparrow until it thaws for burial.

Listen—these things happen.

These things tell us about ourselves.

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6 Responses to THE COLD TAKES US

  1. Thom Foster says:

    Nicey nice.

    It really carries.

  2. Paul Klose, aka Freeman Little says:

    You spin words into prose-style poems like a silk worm spins it’s cocoon. Their word-value is imparted to the mind’s eye where resides the muse in us all. Thanks for being there to inspire us to think harder, to contemplate the unknown and unthinkable, to address peace in each of our hearts. Thank you.

    • Krysia Jopek says:

      Once again you bring me to tears this morning–cathartic tears–that people are praying for my return to bodily, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual health–and that my poetry is doing what it’s set out to do–enrich the lives, thinking, aesthetic/human experience of my fellow humans, whom I desperately need, especially now. ETERNAL THANKS, Freeman
      xoxoxo Krysia

  3. You play with perfection, playfully, but perfectly. Never an adverb as an adjective, the poet became the one teaching it, the potential impossibility of it, it’s truthfully unwinding way as the purest truth; and the poets lie too much, like the winter winds, like the moon of bronze during harvest, like Salome.

    • Krysia Jopek says:

      what a BEAUTIFUL comment–clearly composed by a POET. Thank you so much for recognizing me behind the Veil of Maya–finding the poet in her poem. Salome. I must review her. I thank you from the depthlessness of my eternal heart.

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