Confessions of the Son of Summertime

John Grey

It’s colder, always colder.
A rock can’t be a rock any more,
it must be a chunk of solid ice.
And what about the wind…
no desert oasis offspring
but northern and bone rattling.
Walk this earth and I sink in snow.
No matter how many knives
I stow deep in my drawers,
there’s always hundreds more of them
hanging like stalactites from eaves.
Rooms are no comfort.
Familiar walls and ceilings
bed down with their own killing frost.
No warm-blooded people, just phantoms.
No rich laughter to my heart,
merely a bleach-cheeked shudder
at what it tells my brain.
And look at the sun up there in the sky.
It’s turned its back on weather.
And listen to the knock
of the stranger at my door.
“Can I come in where it’s warmer,”
he pleads to one who knows
that, no matter where you are,
it’s infinitely colder by the minute.
Still, I open my world to him.
You never know when
you’ll need to catch a chill.