Winter of winters

Our winter of winters
of lost months and souls
cracked off the calendar
and splintered our lives

Numbing our toes
running our noses
In fur-collared parkas
and snow-powdered mittens
We squinted our eyes, bracing the cold

Past winters passed,
in headreel spun movies and neverland neurons
in Polaroid pictures and Brownie two-tones
in scrawled whitespace writing
Frosted pane memory clues

We escaped other winters
Fugitive and frozen
in our Zhivago ice house

awaiting magnolias

But this Winter of winters

in glaciered twilight blue-tones  

discovered our redoubt

and blew its ice breath  

Our Yuris, our Laras

our poets, our doctors

turned into peasants

Hoping for Tsarists, hiding from Lenin 

Then
off the turreted roof
cast in permafrost iron
broke the Damocles icicle
not waiting for later

Soul Jickered

It was the Midwinter Jicker,
in Spades then Jacks
Carelessly careening
with us in it path

Brick ice cold buildings,
Victorian floorboards
Its tenants and walkers,
they all had been forewarned

Generations they gathered, 
forted in an oasis  
the big city shoulders
the young Archimedes 

Our spiritual yogis, 
Believers and psalmists
Dreamers and healers, 
oldest and youngest

But the Jicker, it rolled on, depressing, tormenting, 
Then it blew the lights out in a great soul undressing

A Treasured Island

Tattered flags flying, 
runs the Black Pearl
Fiction-book pirates 
blue water whorls

Red stripes, bandanas
three cornered hats
Death rides the tides, 
gold to extract

Caribbean dreams 
Brigantine, schooner
Spiced-rum laced lookouts 
point the pursuers

With cutlass and grape shot 
and manifest greed
Six pounders and chain shot
will soon do the deed

Wrote Daniel DeFoe 
and Fennimore Cooper 
They told the tales 
of Spanish Main troopers

And Rafael Sabatini 
and Sir Walter Scott 
And Robert Louis Stevenson 
who tied them in knots 

Mr. Freeze in Chicago

With Freeze burning buildings, he wrapped fire in ice 

And all over Gotham he fired his North Pole device, 

At the crusaders he let loose; a great jet of water

At Batman and Robin, an icicle slaughter

Winter Chill

It’s less than 15, out at O’Hare

Said Skilling on GN, in his long underwear

Hey Florida, Australia – how can you play tennis?

When here in Chicago, we’re a North Pole apprentice…