Spa in the Winter

With the cold crunch anchoring
beneath tires and footsteps,
leaving imprinted arrangements
of ice stands and snow braids,

the rubber tread marks
raise our set concerns
over the loss of fluidity,
making it understandable

why chlorine vapors are pooled
yearning confluence in the yards.
To melt the sliding snow,

while the simple river only
a few blocks over
umbers all year unfrozen
damson brown
under overhung branches.

Consider, with every breath
another instigated
blaze of thorn apple hills
blossoming with dying fruit.

And even before
the immediate afterward
you want the warmth
to remain in thermal

contusion cycling
as a bath back through
upon yourself.

Goal of self sufficient desire,
so hurriedly supplanted,
circa 1977, through
a purchase of halogen hair
afloat about bromine lips

where distant bridges engulfed
in meaty fog, specious smoke
from fields once scattered
with dandelions eaten by horses
and up until the aluminum
siding dissipated.

Remembrance
of once there was a flower bed
planted shallow beside
the concrete foundation

and the sauntering hose
dribbled meekly down
to the hard ground
of shapeless clay,
adjacently packed below
the soft hairy roots.

The basement lasts longest.

Cool, dusty webs,
steady ground
temperature consistent
with the annually recalled
climate even though isolated
changes.

Reliable as an attic,
that open air
in the ground where
the finished story tends to lie.