The Warmth Between Whiskey and You
By: Jonathan Garren
The snow fell in a slow rage
Like Kamikaze pilots
In the dim, yellow street light.
Dark asphalt and brown fields came
To life with a pale brilliance
Like the mirrored reflection
Of a
full moon night.
As day breaks behind the blue-
Ridge backs of giants, the snow
Slowly bleeds the sky’s color
From brilliant hues to a steel
Gray of ambivalence
The flakes swirl restless and wild
Like a flock of translucent
Birds in the wind, alighting
In fallow fields blazed brown by
Winter’s kiss; the snow collecting
On dead shoots of panicum
Like a
thousand tufts of cotton.
I stand there alone among
The electric mist of white
Noise as each flake dies violent
And cold against my wool hat,
Watching as the empty promises
Of winter fall at the fury
Of a
jealous spring.
Wrapped in the cold I have come
To know, I watch the snow fall
With a silent barrage and
Wonder if I will ever
Find the warmth I felt between
Whiskey
and you.
