Winter Eats Its Own Shadow
By Hilda Weiss
People walk with their chins tucked into their scarves.
Headlights blink on early. Houses come closer together.
From the outside in, winter eats its own shadow.
All the colors carry gray (there’s a need for longing).
But the objects in life? Some just do their work—
the buzz saw down the street begins a porch repair,
a shirt in turquoise plaid flashes by, and at the station,
a train’s recorded voice nags, politely: Doors are closing.
Inside, winter soaks the windows.
The house darkens. That door with clear glass—
its curtains are fluted in dimness. Across my back,
the ache of lugging boxes.
Clouds thrash. Bare vines tighten along the fence.
Sudden and urgent, a dove calls.
Hilda Weiss has poetry published in Spillway, Panoply, Cultural Weekly, the Comstock Review, Salamander, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and Rattle, among others. She also has a chapbook, Optimism About Trees (Finishing Line Press, 2011). She is co-founder and curator for www.Poetry.LA, a website featuring videos of poets and poetry venues in Southern California, and she has an MBA from UCLA. A fourth-generation Californian, she lives, writes, and grows her own vegetables in a garden full of native California plants in Santa Monica.