A PAIR OF AIRS
For Summer, from Winter
A little bird said
you’re thinking of me.
I get wild with torture,
poor chickadee.
Should I warm to a halo
or an angel in the snow?
Summertime, I’m afraid
I don’t remember how.
Here is a snowflake
that looks like a lover
swaying in shallows
by the cliff he went over.
For Winter, from Summer
My days are so long, Jack.
I’ll meet anywhere you name.
Meet me in the longest shadow,
I won’t tell anyone you came.
I look for you in dark looks
where crystal eyes could be.
I look for you where love left
and leaves follow me.
I received your snowflake!
It looks like clover turning
in complicated, implicated,
icy rapids, and I’m burning.
2-STEP ROUND AND REEL
I like how you
look I like how
you fuck
I like how you
smell I like how
you smile
How you fuck like you look
How you smell like you smile, you
Look
Like
you
How
you
Like I
from LIKE YOU
Also including the following poem among many:
In the holy polar vortex:
In the polar vortex we are all friends. We all are friends, for we are cold and going to be
colder, and we warm to each other. After 9/11 we were friendly—actually it was more like our
hatred in that thick moment agglomerated, refocused and massed into a thumbprint
somewhere, not here. For a time we walked down the dirty and clean streets looking kindly
into each other’s eyes.
What could happen now if we walked down the street? Going through extreme cold bares us
thrillingly. Dressing for the weather is like undressing for others, and undressing for the weather
is the wild. If you want to see a fox in the woods across the street, see a red fox. If you want
to see your unborn, find them in the clearing and retrieve them from the cold.
Beth Roberts grew up a pastor’s kid, mostly in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. For over thirty years she’s been living in the Illinois-Iowa Quad Cities. Her first book of poems, Brief Moral History in Blue, was published by New Issues in 2001. She works as the editorial director at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois.
