Summerfield

Sommerfeld - Summerfield 38,5x28,5 cm pastel/watercolour

ODE TO AN ETERNAL WINTER

      You know that feeling

in February when you can’t remember

how you felt in June or the sweet

and sour sort of tropical languor of July,

the sweat and bitchery of it all, how you’ve

forgotten that too, concupiscent interactions,

slow nights of drinking beer on

a sidewalk outside the old elementary school, even the thought

of inadvertently touching a stranger’s slippery skin

an absolute no go, and now here’s a perfect day  

dream reminiscent of a cartoon in the 

New Yorker or Playboy, circa 1970s, in which some poor

slob’s crawling toward a mirage of breasts and palm

leaves, a very tall drink chilling out on a poolside table

next to the girl, girls, many girls everywhere

each as compliant as a politician at a fund raiser

and that’s you, dude, you’re the one sipping gin tonic

in this insipid little fantasy when outside ice crunches

beneath strangers’ boots—in March no less. Tiny violets,

premature, fragile as infants, smothered in a bed of instant snow,

radiator dead, hot water thing busted: can summer be far behind?