January Is To Blame

January goads. It loads

the senses with itself,

not like July, with a supply

of redolence and ripeness,

but with its peculiar brand

of barren brightness –

an implicit icy invitation

which incites – ignites –

the inward thought,

a sentience wrought

from loss: of memory too

buried in the psychic

permafrost to matter

at the surface: but which

soon imbues the winter’s

darker blues and moonlit

hues of ivory and gray

with purpose – not intended,

or much understood. Tonight

I thought I smelled the ghost

of burning wood: a fireplace

I sat by when I was a child,

frightened and beguiled

by captured flame.

January is to blame.

.