Bitter Me and Boris in February

Since it is February

my pens all lay in disarray atop my desk,

a box of tissues crouches underneath,

nearly empty on the fifteenth.

Twenty dollars, six gallons of gas,

radio streaming from Sirius, I try driving away the stillness.

Those bruised and patient pens will wait an eternity,

or February.

Nowhere are these thoughts not there.

I find serial murders of crows, low lying clouds 

hovering and bitter cold from below

all cast down in ochre light. 

I try to forget
any distinct lines

with clarity and save the cruelty 

for April.

Piercing eyes also translates 

into Truth

and the inevitable thaw, moving matters,

the fiery tears Fall with drowned dreams.  

Heavy, a serious wind is now winding down 

her watch and brevity makes beauty

of all passing. If you remember 

how purple was this February...

it must just be

Time

the words mixed

blood and ink.

Painting of Borris (Pasternak) beside the Baltic (1910), By L.Pasternak [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

What to do with a flower

He said no women ever walk with flowers anymore.

He was from a land far away,

the Motherland, the Moon.

How exotic, I thought...

And while adding this meaningless task

to some To Do list or other,

I sensed

How tragic,

to be strolling along

whilst this beauteous thing,

dies in the clutches of my sweaty palms;

strangled and spent,

plucked and perished,

wilted while walking...

And I remember,

I smiled wide,

at this vainglorious vision,

thinking all the while, 

Boris, what a meaningful, exquisitely beautiful thing.

*Boris Pasternak, who noted in an informal/formal interview published in “The Paris Review Interviews series Writers at Work, 2nd series” the first line in this poem as a casual observation whilst walking with the interviewer/writer Olga Annenkov.

Image credit By Florida Memory [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.