Between Holidays

Late November.

Ballpoint touches paper
in blue light filtering through
dust and frost.

A lone engine sputters awake
to a sky like milk glass;
leaves worn to their framework
lie etherized under ice crusts
in gutter pools of rainwater
glazed with gasoline iridescence.

Ink gels on ballpoint tip,
streaking paper in fits and starts.

The garden patch
drinks in embalming fluid;
desiccated stalks twine with tendrils of frost
among rusting segments of chicken wire
and last month’s effigies.
Wisps of lavender and vervain
are strangled in midair
by congealing fog.

Pen scratches go white.

First of December.
The tears crystallize.