Trying to Fuse Dichotomies that Emit a Negative Sheen and Resist
Dark subsumes the afternoon as snowflakes fall,
fingertips floating above the page. I turn
to the fireplace, flames lick the air, and I compare
the snow in 3-D to the fire and pane of glass
between them, at once heat and cold cast
on my skin. What are they striving to say
in their reticent tongues on the cusp of winter,
my age shadowed in a long silhouette
across the wall, rippling with insufficiency.
Music makes it more like film, no ideas here
in things though things press in and out together;
yet snow is not troubled by loss of identity
when lighting upon the ground. The fire consumes
the log artfully until it is ash. The concept is
mine, trying to fuse dichotomies that emit
a negative sheen and resist. As dusk approaches,
the shadow embodies me. Flakes are small flashes
of silence; on the road along the field a lone car is
a wake of red tail lights receding from the window.
The only sound is the hushed glow of breath.
_________________
Paul Freidinger