Chani Zwibel

Night-sleet whispered a ghost story,
with tiny nail tips of frost combing against my bedroom window.
Nature outside shed her red shawl to stand naked in the darkness
before winds that howled, wolf-wild.
The last, ravished, crimson leaves fell like blood-drops from trees,
leaving only a faded, remembered vermilion in my dreams as I slept through the storm.

Morning sun struggled up, a dim-lit match-tip of red against a steel silver curtain.
Crystal icicles hung like lightless chandeliers
over cold-stripped boughs.
My backyard was a strange, still ocean
of foamy white snow-drift waves,
as if heavy cumulous clouds
had made their thick nest in my lawn.
I had already forgotten the color of grass.
The grey-white smear of winter
painted over my memory of trees,
clothed in summer-lush pink blossoms.

Our creek was a bridge of glass,
cracked in spots, shattered in others,
punctured with fallen tree limbs,
whose black and frost-burnt arms lay prone,
their twig fingers scraping
the gravelly bottom of the churning water beneath.
Through the ice I could see, but not touch,
dead-minnow-belly grey pebbles.

Cautious not to tread where I would sink
through the deep-piled snow,
I walked out to the center of the field.
A lost, moaning song in empty tree tops
haunted my ears.
With my face to the fogged-mirror sky,
I lay on my back with my arms spread,
mimicking the silhouette of angel wings.
Snowflakes falling burned
brittle kisses on my cheeks,
left stranger’s tears in my eyes.