Icicles weep from each rooftop corner
dangle from windows cast steep shadows
Temperatures keep falling falling
It’s so cold we could be residents of Uranus
Our mailman likens this winter to Old Times
This morning a thick-coated doe licks away
heaps of rock salt from our asphalt driveway
snow and ice have buried grass for weeks
In Minneapolis, snow sweeps past protesters
Renee Nicole Good’s last words—That's fine, dude.
I'm not mad at you—a study in poetic irony
Someone should re-name ICE Murder Inc
In 2025 thirty-two people are known to be dead
from ICE detention At least sixteen people shot
four killed by Trump’s [bleep]ing storm troops
carrying sleek weapons of war to US city streets
Tasers rubber bullets white smoke pepper balls
swirl whirl like Saturn’s wind-blown gases
Space station astronauts are returning to Earth
The gravity of the situation will soon be evident
This week there is a stargazing party in an upstate
New York park Peeking at stars is often best
in darkness while others sleep There is also
stormy weather on Jupiter Venus Mars
This month’s Wolf Moon beamed brayed
its afterglow stayed chill until dawn
The wolves are scowling howling prowling
We are all in danger We are all afraid
Mary K O’Melveny, a happily retired attorney, is the author of four poetry collections and a chapbook. Her most recent, If You Want To Go To Heaven, Follow A Songbird, is an album of poems, art and music. Mary’s award-winning poems have appeared in many print and on-line literary journals and anthologies and on international blog sites, including The New Verse News. Mary’s collection Flight Patterns was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Her book Merging Star Hypotheses (2020) was a semi-finalist for The Washington Prize, sponsored by The Word Works. Mary has been three-times nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is an active member of the Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group and her poetry appears in the Group’s two published anthologies An Apple In Her Hand and Rethinking The Ground Rules. Mary lives with her wife near Woodstock, New York.
