Winter Mornings on 17th Street
by Samuel T. Franklin
The sky tumbles to Earth and shatters
to
ice. Snow folds like colorless oceans
and
shifts, greedy, across the trees.
The
creek shines clear and clean
as
wiped porcelain. A man in dark wool
studies
the frozen currents,
drops
twigs and pine needles on the ice
and
tries to conjure some prophecy of spring.
Wind
slips subtle as a thorn
through
jackets and gloves.
I
do not know this city,
and
the ravens are quiet.
The
man in dark wool stands,
hopeless,
the twigs piled at his feet,
burned
by invisible fire.
Samuel
T. Franklin
is mostly from Indiana, by way of Clayton, Terre Haute, and
Bloomington. His first book, The
God of Happiness (Main
Street Rag Publishing Co.), was published in 2016. He can be found at
samueltfranklin.wordpress.com.