Winter Sound

Somewhere it’s snowing, and it looks like this:
figures in the house, behind the glass window,
the wind just a distant sound that blows the white on white,
the trees just lighter and darker shades of disturbance.

Here, it is fall, though the air still feels like summer.
Something tells you you should be marching,
though you don’t feel like marching:
every step you take pinches your toes.

It could be that your shoes don’t fit.

But the seasons, too, seem uncomfortable
with handing off the baton. They’re sitting around
instead, having coffee and chatting about
why one is sadder than the other, whose hurts
matter more. When the coffee goes cold
summer stands, stretches and evaporates

leaving autumn staring at the empty chair
that is winter. The silence that doesn’t talk back
even when you think you might want it to.
Quiet that, beaten down with fists and jabbed
with elbows, poked with sticks, stabbed
with knives, remains quiet.

Somewhere there’s a house where the only noise
they hear is the noise they make for themselves.