Shorewood

A frost-chilled wind
somersaults off the lake,
up the bluff,
across the town. 
Many of those 
from my past
life 
from my present
life
from my past
life 
crack open gritty eyelids,
rustle stiff limbs,
and peek out windows laced with cobwebs
of ice. 

The breath comes 
cold, then warm, 
then cold again;
As the newspaper is grabbed quickly
from the front stoop
and barrel-chested furnaces exhale steam,
piping rings of them, 
out to the uninviting air.

At the same time,
the hooing wind deftly scatters 
delicate bits of matter, space, and hope
over the treetops and chimneys,
and I come to think,
we are not unlike these flakes;
Or maybe just, 
that they cycle with a timelessness
to be emulated. 
Sometimes driven,
sometimes lilting,
carried by unknown whims. 

The same such whims, perhaps,
that have tugged me like taut heartstrings 
away from this place...
A town slow and sleepy and still snuggled
under warm blankets 
in the kiln-fired molds of memory;

But in reality less a mosaic of static pottery shards 
and more gusts over a snow-laden bluff;
ephemeral, transient, alive...

For when I return to this little square mile
wedged between river and lake
and lug my suitcases to the weathered porch 
with the broken slats;
Home, I must reconcile,
has developed, aged, grown 
right alongside me;

Frost-chilled winds of time pinwheeling their way
across the ever-shifting waters and lands.