ARRIVING AT FROST

ARRIVING AT FROST
Bruce Harris

I remember I saw you once as a sun
benignly smiling above people’s beaches;
holiday summer for those who accepted,
melanoma for awkwards who didn’t.
I basked and I burned with equal intensity
switching between ice creams and lotions.

As a moon, you were select with your light;
lit up for skinny dips and giggles,
craterous depths when pointed elsewhere.
I could cope with halfs, crescents and fulls,
but total eclipses could really be trying
as could unpredictable gravity.

One man’s summer breeze is another’s tornado
and standing stripped naked, it does rather matter.
I never could see your cyclones approaching
until stranded again in the eye of the storm;
wind’s energy source and vulgar emission;
the difference not always so very apparent.

And much the same could be said of your rain;
sprinkling showers which nourished my roots
until I would actually burst into flower
unashamed of the colours I showed to the world
and then again, the long hot monsoons
almost incomprehensibly thoroughly wet.

And now it seems from my on the blink barometer
that finally, we’re arriving at frost.
My extremities feel in genuine danger
and before I’m found face down in a glacier,
my body perfectly preserved for science,
I shall follow the river to a long way away.

©2012 This work is the property of the author.