Deep and Crisp and Even
The old carol of the good king lilted
on waves of warmth softly snoring
through floor vents from where it was fun
to think the stolid German furnace slept,
and it felt cozy to imagine a beggar
in filthy flapping rags hugging himself
out there in the barren garden
while ghost men whirled up around him
in dervish ecstasy for several spins
before subsiding in centripetal
diffusion into the white horde
streaming between corn stubble,
piling like slain in shallow furrows,
and it was fun to think every snow snit,
each unique in that flying mass,
was a damned soul, that each small scream
rose into a hellish howl that sighed
as a low moaning just an inch inside
two-ply panes, and inside an ember glowed
up at the thought of scampering
out into that whistling tempest
in just shirtsleeves to shove a crisp twenty
into the poor man’s coat pocket--
but what if…yes, what if eyes locked
as swirls of fine frozen gauze scoured
faces of giver and taker alike,
and instead of dewy gratitude
the gaze glared cruel as black coal
stuck in the head of a man of snow,
and huddled blue, stripped and beaten
by the door left locked in the rush
to go do good, with only small cyclones
rising and falling like warriors sown
from dragons’ teeth to attend this end,
blessed numbness should finally come
with that sleep, neither cold nor warm,
so feared yet yearned for—O, if beggars now
were as they were in old kings’ times,
but what might today’s crude ruffians do
and say if they sat all smelly inside
before the football game droning in its box,
and should their sweet eggnog get warmed
by bitter whiskey, and would they sing-
a-long with us while ever-amusing
chipmunks squeaked out Jingle Bells Rock,
to break the ice?
on waves of warmth softly snoring
through floor vents from where it was fun
to think the stolid German furnace slept,
and it felt cozy to imagine a beggar
in filthy flapping rags hugging himself
out there in the barren garden
while ghost men whirled up around him
in dervish ecstasy for several spins
before subsiding in centripetal
diffusion into the white horde
streaming between corn stubble,
piling like slain in shallow furrows,
and it was fun to think every snow snit,
each unique in that flying mass,
was a damned soul, that each small scream
rose into a hellish howl that sighed
as a low moaning just an inch inside
two-ply panes, and inside an ember glowed
up at the thought of scampering
out into that whistling tempest
in just shirtsleeves to shove a crisp twenty
into the poor man’s coat pocket--
but what if…yes, what if eyes locked
as swirls of fine frozen gauze scoured
faces of giver and taker alike,
and instead of dewy gratitude
the gaze glared cruel as black coal
stuck in the head of a man of snow,
and huddled blue, stripped and beaten
by the door left locked in the rush
to go do good, with only small cyclones
rising and falling like warriors sown
from dragons’ teeth to attend this end,
blessed numbness should finally come
with that sleep, neither cold nor warm,
so feared yet yearned for—O, if beggars now
were as they were in old kings’ times,
but what might today’s crude ruffians do
and say if they sat all smelly inside
before the football game droning in its box,
and should their sweet eggnog get warmed
by bitter whiskey, and would they sing-
a-long with us while ever-amusing
chipmunks squeaked out Jingle Bells Rock,
to break the ice?
