For Everything There is a Season

winter-long, we shivered in thinly-papered rooms: pressed rags

into gaps: skinned our chill-thickened fingers

while outside, under slate skies, sluggish water

stretched                                      and                              yawned

when ice-sheets humped across a rumpled river bed,  we heard

trees groan: we humped and groaned—

now summer is born and we detect stench of rotted baseboards

painted yellow: I close my eyes, try (not) to know

you: permafrost                          stay hard                       unthaw

under scorched hands, I melt: in scorched lands       abandoned

saplings wither, breathless

ash-coated roots refuse: ash drifts indoors

leaden snow /sand, banked against thinly-papered            walls

grey baseboards, soft as rot, birth spores: we                    hump

and groan, sweating as permafrost becomes

friable: before

long, winter will burn, not bite

while summer’s carcass spoils: while we

with thickened fingers, wrap ragged hope around our afterbirth.

Jude Marr teaches, and writes poetry, as protest. Their chapbook, Breakfast for the Birds (Finishing Line), was published in 2017. Recent credits include Wend, Minerva Rising, and Eye Flash Poetry. Follow them @JudeMarr1 and find more of their work at www.judemarr.com