Dan Tessitore
A MIND OF WINTER

You knew before
you drew the shade

(before you shook
the dream of flying),

the silence saying
…………..snow, saying

……………get up,
…………..draw the shade,

………….see what you
………….know to be true.

And there it is,
the color of paper.

*

How many years
has the snow collected

the sun, returned
the sun as silver?

*

In the dream
you are young.

It is Christmas
Eve. You lie

beneath the tree,
gazing up

through lights,
ornaments,

strings of tinsel
beckoning,

toward the glow
of the top-most

star, invisible
from where you are,

yet radiant,
like the future.

The future, years
ago, was constant

vertigo.
…………..Wake up.

And there it is,
ceiling-white.

*

Trudged by the letter
carrier, tramped

by children, scraped
and plowed and pressed

by the (suddenly) desperate
for milk and bread,

rubbed down by the tire,
it lies there,

the color of erasure,
then is gone

altogether in a furious
rip of water down

drains. Page after page
torn from its coil.

And there it is —
green as the promise

the dead would rise
…………..The dead will
…………..not rise

like a Christo un-
wrapped at last

— the world you
thought you knew:

sarvisberry blooming,
ground softening.
…………..It softens for you.

Dan Tessitore’s work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Common, Denver Quarterly, Fence, and elsewhere. He teaches writing and literature at Eastern Illinois University.

Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #12.