Winter
by James AL Midgley
[ poetry - june 07 ]
Not winter, you think,
but a bell-maned lion
gnawing the frayed tail of dawn.
He laps from the lake of colour,
clamps the tulip shut with a kiss
of breath, tightens it to a bullet.
Craftsmen with cut hands collect
his shed nails to elbow their umbrellas,
an eyelash here and there for rope
suited to the coil of a whip.
You look away and there is snow,
suddenly, as if you've come-to
from a dream of moulted needles.
Your child shows you a lion
smeared in crayons, just the black
outline, and seeing all that white
a synapse chills, a brush of fur
embeds the palms with stars of ice,
shrapnel from blown windows, silver
in your eye where he entered.
