by Aidan Chafe
You wail the word winter
as if it’s the plague
that befalls year after year.
As if held witness
to the exodus of geese
heading southbound,
and leaves floating serenely
to their end,
rattles you to your core.
Sure the city suffers
seasonal dementia,
its colours bleached
by a collusion of clouds
in a climatic prank,
eased at a more
vulnerable hour
by manufactured
consumerism
and mass ritualization
of myth.
So what? Relax. Exhale.
Watch water vapour
rise from your mouth
like a miniature smokestack.
Walk in any direction
to make granola sounds
in the snow.
Look at the brotherhood of bird
in the backyard,
bare and battle-scarred.
Stiff as corpses.
For a moment
Death wants the limelight.
Before we can breathe again.
Before we can start over.
— from Juniper Volume 3, Issue 2