What Happens Next
Another night with the frost,
she says, and you’ll know
the half-life of cold.
Which is not to say enjoy,
or pity, or pretend.
It is the sheath of God’s
gaze, an unsuspected lump.
The harvested curse.
You grasp what happens next.
O at the Edges 
Nice one Robert.
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Thank you, Anita.
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I see a …shoulder, …as ice – and a very long night and, perhaps, a not very welcome dawn.
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I think many long nights…
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Fascinating choice of 2nd image … the poem does not suggest any exit! Grasping not so much what happens next as what you wish could? (Both utterly outside grasping in my experience …)
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Outside of my direct experience, too. But open to that of others. 🙂
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Every year at this moment (today is unequivocally winter where I am) the same sense of never having *left* this season — of only having been granted a six-month reprieve from an eternally gestating absence. The why of it is right here.
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For me, it’s the inevitability of summer. Some things are difficult to escape.
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“the sheath of God’s gaze” holy crap that is inspired.
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Thanks, Daniel. One of those phrases that popped out…
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Holy smokes. Chilled to the bone.
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Thanks, Jilanne!
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Wow. Precisely so.
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Thank you!
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