(Today we welcome back poet John Grey. Get used to seeing him over the next four days!–The Eds.)

From a gray and restless sky,

the snow comes down like a verdict.

Guilty, it says.

And the cold is ten degrees below mercy.

A leaf is torn apart, as is my face.

The wind makes no distinction

between what belongs and what’s been cast out.

Swirling drifts erase birds from the sky’s memory.

Shards of ice collide.

They pull me into their quarrel.

Am I, like them, a fragment blown off course.

A stray cat wails from the pain of exposure.

A rabbit disappears into the earth before night can claim it.

A mouse finds entry in wall

sealed tight against the likes of us.

Somewhere, I tell myself, a fire still burns for me.

And a woman waits with an embrace warm enough to unmake winter.

But that is a country I can no longer reach.

For now I walk the frozen floorboards of this weather,

unable to think of anyone else’s suffering,

not with all this needling, this stabbing,

this piercing reminder of where I cannot ever be.

Tonight, it’s my turn.

I’m the one

who needs dragging in from the streets.

John Grey