Frostwriting

Three Poems

by Robert McDonald

Dear November,

A spider’s made of fingers and a fanged

dose of sleep, architect and contractor
of her home,

(it is also her net,
her stage,
her friendly neighborhood noose)

all material spun
from the stuff
of herself, the spider kisses
the housefly

with a mouthful of death,
she binds and calms the struggling
moth, and caresses
the grasshopper’s bloodless
hull; her web

is her chapel, her form
a ballerina, every night
she mends
her wedding dress
and marries the attic,
the porchlight,
the unused

basement chair. 

Dear November,

Consider
a warm afternoon:
a crow

stalks the shade beneath
a sycamore tree,
picking

at some kind of meat
in the grass.  If
your soul

became a bird.
If that bird muttered
with an old man’s

throat.  If there’s a soul.
If the crow
found a treasure,

a beakful, a bone.
The soul’s search,
the crow’s

hunger.  The luck
of the scrap. The force
of the stab.

The pluck and rasp
of those black
scissors. Crows,

their voices. Crows
in the branches
like a wicked boys choir.

Dear November,

Claim this cloak
of moth wings and damp
fallen leaves.

I’m the man
become suddenly old, the man
who shivers

and stands at the curb. 
I have cast aside
all cloaks.  Finger by finger

I have taken off
my gloves. 
Tell me what

to ask
of the harsh realm
of winter.

I give my checkered wool cap to the wind.