“The shadow boys are breaking all the laws.” —Tom Waits
We knew it would be so. Didn’t they
tell us themselves? Too cold on these dark streets,
we shudder at the sound of things breaking,
coming nearer. Unfortunately not too cold
for them, who are well described by the name
Ice. We wonder if the night air will come
rushing through our own shattered windows.
The river is frozen, the snow-covered
surface a field of inaction, the birds
who need open water gone elsewhere.
Winter is a lid on a pot simmering,
sooner or later to boil over. That is
our trust as we rest, while the cold shadows
slip through the dark with their icy hammers.
Thomas R. Smith’s recent books are a poetry collection Medicine Year (Paris Morning Publications) and a prose work Poetry on the Side of Nature: Writing the Nature Poem as an Act of Survival (Red Dragonfly Press). He lives in western Wisconsin near the Kinnickinnic River.
