Cold Feet

Like transplant Texans from Nebraska
find themselves missing the snow,
I miss the cold hard center of your kindness.
I look up from a bowl of soup, from
a spoon, on an afternoon thick
with humidity, see the porch through
the window, wet, sweating as concrete
will sweat, like a glass of iced tea does,
like whole buildings do,
their tears streaming down their
walls, their moist protest, a wish
for a fierce cold wind to sweep
over their faces, the bluster of a Northern,
the snap of a branch fallen, heavy
with ice, a dog bowl filled with snow,
the aching bones of the arthritic, power
lines blown down, black ice paving
a street with no lights, the bellicose
cold zing on the eyeballs at ten below,
the drifts so high you can leap off
your rooftop, your fingers frozen to the key
of a house where you belong but
don't want to belong, the zipper
of your coat unzipping, your shivering
lips on mine, our cold feet
rubbing together, a spark, then ablaze.