Front Porch Review (Online) January 2014
--Originally appeared in Feb 2006 at Crescent Moon Journal
Outside for obligatory photographs:
ubiquitous head-shot, profile,
three-quarter profile, bust.
I stand between the battered, rusty
plow, lost in a stand of spruce,
and the house’s winter windows,
nearly buried by blizzard. I squint
and I will be squinting forever
standing, frozen by the shutters.
When I see myself, inside, later,
at first only pixels, then paper thin,
I am several hundred pounds of meat
none of it lean, leaning on a cane,
a lame spectacle trapped by
reflex and bifocality, with snow
at the temple of my thinning hair.