After the Ice Storm
by Patrick Meighan


After Charles Simic

This is what I saw – trees like crystal mummies,
Wrens picking their way over the glazed grass littered
With razor shards that broke off branches,
And my neighbor on his knees chipping ice off his front steps.

He was a Michelangelo cursing god and his muse,
Feverishly freeing a figure of stone from ice,
Flecks of ice like marble in his beard
While the cold sun was having a good laugh at his expense.






Copyright © 2024 by Red River Review. First Rights Reserved. All other rights revert to the authors.
No work may be reproduced or republished without the express written consent of the author.