Smoke and Optimysticism
R Hamilton
This time’ll be different, you’ll see.
This time, in the future I’ve laid out
for us together, the icicles are thicker
and colder and the snow much more
firmly packed as we retreat messily
before the burgeoning, hot-breathed
Spring. It will all work out fine, I know
now, if we can only unhear the squeals
and cracks of our self-absorbed footsteps
splintering the bright veneer of blinding,
frozen crust stretching out endlessly to the
North, South, West and East, and elsewhere.
