a poem found...

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
snowflakes dance
beneath the street lamp
with an electric midas touch
twirling like childhood's ballerinas
while the heavy sable sky
looks down reassuringly at
long bare limbs stretched for a
chilled embrace
still and silently waiting
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


The last time I wrote a poem in earnest, I was in college. It was a creative writing course and for my final project, I did a reading of six pieces before the class. It seemed more vulnerable to me than parading about naked. Somewhere, buried in a box, is the packet I had to submit that carries the professor's red-penned scrawl - "If you do not do something with your writing, it will be criminal."

I have been a guilty fugitive, running from that statement for nearly a decade, until tonight when this poem came to me with a single glance out my window.