It's Still Life

Process Note: This rewrite is for Lisa who was sad that I omitted the bit about the cat. But then it all felt slightly unseasoned, so I added a sinister wolf. Now it just needs three little pigs (I’ll credit Vinny for his subliminal message).

Crouching in the Bedsheets

Winter.
Time to eat fat,
to fight
the walls
and blankets,

and
the smell of musty sofas.

Winter is
a grey-eyed wolf’s
breath of
burped-up meat,

a tapestry
of bleached fog.

Winter
crouches on
the horizons you ride,
on the space
you pass through,

on banners of hope,
beer bottles
dead birds,

and
cats like stray bullets –
with yellow Houdini eyes.

Winter is that cat,
the colour of pewter mornings.
A porcelain grin.

Make it be spring!

Let the air in front of me
blossom with
conversation, and
forests thicken with legend.

But it is winter.

Time to eat fat,
and crouch
into bedsheets.