This Does Me for Snow

 

A bed’s made in a hurry.
The blanket settles
and the awkward contours
of a kicked-off sock, a paperback
are soothed … and this
does me for snow

while these sweet equivalencies
put the pink in my cheeks
and a snap in my bunting:
the whoof of a tube pulling into the station,
the hand-dryer’s hot down-draft,
the small mistral
from a slammed novel.

Fog where
an ice-cube cold front collides
with the ambient heat of the gin;
fog where
the juniper and lime roll in
and over my brain
hitting the dewpoint
again and again.

Imaginary friends!
Hey, dream lovers and drama queens –

yesterday, the neighbour’s cat
seeped into my house
through an open window,
and somewhere today
a dog has set in barking
for the afternoon.

Bark, bark, bark,
bark, bark.

unpublished poem, © Julia Bird 2009, used by permission of the author.

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