Raymond Farr

A Dead Man Picking Fruit in a Blizzard

To catch the hole
It left behind
 
—Julie Doxsee

Blood draining from her chapped lips
She hurries over the stained white pages
 
Of trampled snow—a coveted warmth
Blinding her with its nuance
 
& quiet as morning on every sidewalk
She speaks the brisk sounds a poet makes
 
Her breath is pure Russian winter
& like a dead man picking fruit in a blizzard
 
The whispers of the others sleeping in lock-down
Tell her someone is groping for meaning
 
In the shadows of the orchard
But in the pose of things frozen in procession--
 
                              White flecks of sun
On the tree lined streets!
 
                                     But whose peaches
Are these peaches, she wonders, spilling out
 
Chaotically tonight all over the icy
Alewife Brook Parkway? The good luck
 
Has been edited all out of them & snow
Buries this business of misfortune




--
Raymond Farr is author of Ecstatic/.of facts (Otoliths 2011), & Writing What For? across the Mourning Sky (Blue & Yellow Dog 2012), sic transit—“g” (Blue & Yellow Dog 2012, 2016), Poetry in the Age of Zero Grav (Blue & Yellow Dog 2015) & 2 e-chapbooks, Eating the Word NOISE! (White Knuckle Chaps 2015), & A Journey of Haphazard Miles (ALT POETICS 2016). Raymond is editor of Blue & Yellow Dog, now archived at http://blueyellowdog.weebly.com & publisher/editor of a new poetry blog, The Helios Mss.