SEVERAL MEANINGS OF COLD
Elisavietta Ritchie
for Pedro,
Toronto, October
The kid from Mexico saws the dead cedar
to logs. He's newly arrived, and broke.
She needs the tree cut, spreads her hands
the width of the barren hearth.
Win-ter comes soon, she enunciates,
shivering in the futile sun. She flutters
gloved fingers skyward as if the red-orange-gold
fallout of leaf flakes were icy white.
Has he seen snow in his mountains?
Or only soot falls from cities, volcanic ash,
the dust of drought. Perhaps blizzards
of russet wing flakes from migrating monarchs.
Here, he will learn several meanings of cold:
the cold, how cold, a cold, cold shoulder.
What of the ice of the muted voice,
deep-freeze of the heart...
She'll pass on her son's outgrown parka.
The grocer sells chilis, red-devil hot.
She thaws one can of juice. Drink.
Should she offer hot coffee?
His notched blade grinds the resistant trunk.
She picks up a log, sniffs the maroon-pink core.
Fragrant. Good smell....Log. Saw. To saw a log.
Two logs. Saw. See. Sawn. Seen. Seesaw. Say...
How vital the shift of one letter.
Gusts whirl sawdust like beige snowflakes.
Cold. Frigo. She hopes that's correct.
Wind. Cold wind. Win-ter. Win-ter. Cut. Cut. Cut.
