Rummy Park, 26
(Meeting Winter)

by Rebecca Lu Kiernan

I leave the roar of the airport road
To meet winter in the park.
Even ghosts open their palms
To the icy shards of rain.
My puma coat flies
In the razory moon-drowned wind.
All shades are within
The feathery browns of december grass
And the vein blue of the comatose willow.
You come with some stylish bouquet
Of ash red orchids and heliotrope
And some species of heart-leaf
I never knew, or have forgotten,
With some cheerless type of sandspur vine
I was strangling in a window box
On my old street.
Your eyes are betrayal.
Your hands, treason.
You say my language is a labyrinth
Careening to a trap door
And everything I thought I knew of love
Will be reversed in a hair-trigger.
I stand, a sportless target.
The bats in the bell tower
Have cruel red eyes,
But they remember april skies.