This Winter, Two People:

This winter, two people
edge upon edge
and the slight misgivings .
on the lawn the boy is rushing up the frost bitten lawn
his red button nose and pinched smile:

“what did you want from me?” he asks,
but soon all the boy remembers
is his father clutching his mother’s hand
(that’s him, that’s him, now hold it in, hold it all in)

why do all these idiotic
moronic
stupid
people
want a way out?

the world doesn’t come naturally to anyone!
when he was younger the boy lived in a strange world
full of awe at the bustle and life of it all,
in that dreamworld world where you forgot your own name
in the fancy of it all.

This winter, two people are on edge.
that delicate flower you were trying so hard to preserve
like melting snow, soon gone
and not till he takes her through the second barren dawn
will it lift her from the sleep again.

The mother will see the smiling boy
And she painfully
regretfully
remembers a lost moment.

Kissing is that act of sheer remeberance
as the two people edge upon edge
topple against the sunlight,
exposed and bare, unable to
remember anything, but trying so hard…

The boy enters the house,
his breeches worn from the wind
and the wintry weather.

Night falls on the county town,
and the homestead will slowly quiet down within the hour,
The father in his armchair, reading by firelight,
will see his son’s ruddy chapped face
in a bright white silhouette
imagining for one single guilty moment that he is his son;
and his son will catch a hopeful glimpse upward
and imagine that he is his father.