the cold envies whom?

night bites with its single cold tooth

each mountain fang waits to be scraped clean

early afternoon winds howled through

left behind cold breath to settle miles deep:

the cold already arrived sinks deep tonight.

 

cold plunges its lethal chill spade

into the dirt before cold takes the earth

to ossify it stiff with ice

the semblance of cold the semblance of death

said only to be felt this side of the grave.

 

this cold came only from our north

but arriving here may as well have come

from just outside the Kuiper Belt

a distant cold suited to hosts of dead

―but for those with working lungs, brisk air to breathe!