Kristina England

Eye of a winter hurricane makes
the Sunday news, fifth storm to
hit us in a month.  I am buried 
in Worcester, not by the weather,
but by my grandmother's death,
greed dispensing across my family,
they circle each other and cluck.

I hear beaks can peck your eyes out,
so I retreat from the mother hens,
white banks my temporary shelter.
It's always the innocent bystander
who gets wounded; wings broken,
I drag myself through the cold,
in pursuit of a Samaritan or two.

They are there.  Look for the house
with a light on.  They will give you
refuge, warm your body with soup,
even when the longest icicle breaks
free from its hardened dam, and
lands square on your heart, trying
to shatter your bewildered soul.

 

 

Look at it this way

The car is resting in your driveway,
no miles to disrupt its engine,
and you no longer have to yell at 
the plow that my mother hired,
"Stop, you're doing it all wrong!"
You're skipping over winter, love,
a season New Englanders wish
they could wake up from, snow
falling, wind blowing negativity
into your brittle, blackened bones.  
Soon the whole thing will pass.
Or maybe, you.  Sleep now,
Grandmother.  Do not worry of
a descent.  Yes, you were a force
to be reckoned with, but that’s
not how the story concludes.
Think of a sun that never sets,
the serenity of an unbroken
silence that will come to us all.

Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her fiction and poetry are published or forthcoming in Gargoyle, Linguistic Erosion, Parody, The Story Shack, Undertow Tanka, and other journals.  Her first flash fiction chapbook, Stanley Stanley's Investigative Services and Other Mysteries, was published by Poet's Haven Press in September 2014.

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