Matthew Burns
DECEMBER

Think of the frost
That will crack our bones eventually.
–Tom Hennen, “Love for Other Things”

I will, and I will
Walk into the morning
Light falling like snow: a flurry:
Life. Cold is and I am.

Tell me something other.
I will walk away, leaving:
Everything I am.

They say (they and I,
I say and lie) when one is
Inhaled by avalanche
The bright fire of life is
Stoked in wind and
A great black night.
It is night,

Now; I am alive.
The frost will do: crack,
Cry: a sky of bones
Ready to alight on my lying.

I am thinking of the morning
Light, but it is far and
Unrelieving.

My bones are alive,
Flying for now, for tonight.

Matthew Burns teaches writing and literature in upstate New York. His poem “Rhubarb” won a James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review; other poems have received Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations and have appeared or are forthcoming in Posit, ellipsis…, The Raleigh Review, Camas, Spoon River Poetry Review, Quiddity, LimeHawk, and others.  He also serves as a poetry editor for Heron Tree.

Image credit: Tim Tiedemann on Unsplash

Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #16.