Cold Snap

Now we’re here

and what we thought we’d do

has been subsumed 

by all the day’s particulars —

the cold,

the sun’s low angle

(bleak, oblique, but warming through the glass,)

the newly rising urgencies

and their disjointed rhythms —

times of waiting spaced between demanding tasks —

So we stay home

and move within the small circles,

try to settle in,

protect the center.

©Wendy Mulhern

December 7, 2013