A Walk in Winter

by

Ronald G. Auguste

(For Ted Christ)

The chimney stacks weep smoke into the sky.
Frost-fashioned mirrors image the decay
Of sleazy houses, standing stark and high,
In the cold breezes of a Winter day.

The sidewalks are deserted as I leave
The chilly prison of my lonely room,
Where happy recollections made me grieve,
Beside a huffy heater in the gloom.

Shreds of torn paper (Keep the City clean!)
Dance crazy spirals on the asphalt lanes;
Some kids peer out through windows, vaguely seen,
Their noses squashed against cold window-panes.

The Winter sun leers like a jaundiced eye,
Through sombre clouds, upon the Sunday City;
As if dust smitten, it begins to cry
Unwarming tears of radiance -- like pity.

I leave the loveless houses far behind.
Beside the Thames, half empty buses roar
Like starving monsters of an alien kind.
Saturday's crowds are gone; sleek pigeons soar

Above the silent buildings, beating air
So passively, on graceful, throbbing wings!
I stand to watch them, rooted in despair,
Moved by the thoughts of home their freedom brings.

Cold bitten to the bone, and hungry now,
I lick my lips, a lawful fugitive.
Fog from my breathing freezes on my brow.
O Lord, to shuck these heavy clothes and live!

Unmindful of the heartless hurting me!
Unmindful of the bitter Winter frost!
Unmindful of this abject misery,
Brooding on joys I'd known -- in exile lost!

Oh why in hell must some be so alone?
Only the murky river makes reply.
Deriding me in its drear monotone,
It seems to whisper: "Why, oh why, oh why?"

I watch it, slinking in an oily flow,
And long to drown my sorrows, deep and slow.

NEXT?
Why don't you look at Galaxy Inferno
by: Richard James Van Der Draaij
from: Bristol, England, UK

To visit all of Ronald G. Auguste's poems, click HERE

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