Polar Vortex
On such a morning you’d charge out to marvel
at arse-deep spilth and a still air charred
with cold, the blank after the blizzard,
a scene as familiar as summer’s burden
of heat, when my hair frizzed and mosquito burrs
swole up my feet like homebaked dinner rolls
and our southern friends taught us to lay
back, saunter slow, go easy,
want the sweat, do nothing like crazy,
but this snow day was different: Mayor Pete
on the radio insisting the whole city stay put,
so much for poetry and for prose the neat
roulette curves of frost on our windows, the margins
of the house too frigid for bare feet, our snit
with the world alone staying warm, staying simple;
on such a morning when it dawns we’ve failed
to stockpile enough food for a trio of snow days,
let alone beer, let alone prepped ourselves to stave
off starving Hoosiers in whatever end-times emerge
this century, which might be all about weather
or all about those who go forth while we slugabout here,
news is an Elkhart man has perished of leaving home,
heart-stopped by cold; and even after the snow,
there is this distance between us and other people.