Frost
We’re walking over the frosted fields, before breakfast,
sunrise squinting in our tight faces;
your gloved hand in mine, each cold breath
hallowed
by a night of owls and stars.
By the church a ghost grey horse stares
over a gate. A stream we can step across
sizzles through pebbles; from a cottage chimney
a single rope
of smoke hangs upwards.
The drunken lovemaking done, and the dreaming,
we are washed now and buckled in warm coats
as if we’re walking to school;
I could sit by you,
crayon a house with a red roof;
I could giggle with a woolly finger
kiss me in the icing on the cars,
imagining your marzipan taste,
your shampoo smell;
we could breathe on each other like dragons.
You could break an icicle off the swings
in your blue mittens, and feed me
a spoonful of snow pie. (It’s rough at first,
like wedding cake,
then melts to a taste of your mouth.)
How long, love, before the greedy sun
licks it all up again and bawls with hunger?
The morning, with its dark armpits, its ashtray breath,
is already dribbling
as it fumbles at our snug buttons.
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