The winter former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser was recovering from cancer, he wrote a series of poems on postcards that he sent to his friend and fellow-writer, Jim Harrison. This is one of them:
December 22
Five below zero.
The cold finds its way through the wall
by riding nails, common ten-penny nails
through a wall so packed with insulation
it wouldn't admit a single quarter-note
from the wind's soprano solo. Yet you can touch
this solid wall and feel the icy spots
where the nails have carried the outside
almost into the house, nickel-sized spots
like the frosty tips of fingers, groping,
and you can imagine the face
of the cold, all wreathed in flying hair,
its long fingers spread, its thin blue lips
pressed into the indifferent ear
of the siding, whispering something
not one of us inside can hear.
--
This poem is from the book, Winter Morning Walks: one hundred postcards to Jim Harrison, published by Carnegie-Mellon University Press in 2000.
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