Vox Populi
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Doug Anderson: The Coming Dark
Back in the pines winter puts on his brass knuckles.
My old wounds begin to hurt.
As always I tell him, You’ll not get me yet.
I’ll do all the things I do to keep him at bay.
Build a fire of roses deep in the snow.
Light candles in the back of my mind
and find unnamed fruit growing there
to sustain me in the long black nights.
If I’m lucky, I’ll find a lover,
and praise the silk of her inner thighs.
We’ll divide you between us
and you’ll last only half as long.
When you finally get me I’ll give you my clothes
as the condemned did the hangman long ago
so he would do his job well and the pain not linger.
Winter, the doctors huddle in your tent, ready to work,
restless like small boys, inventing diseases
hitherto unnamed and medicines to heal them.
Death scoffs at them, is bored, returns to his television
where politicians do his work for him.
Back in the present, the morning is fine.
I plan poems and adventures,
grateful for this time left, that my legs still work,
will carry me out into the bright day
to once more be seduced by mystery.
—
Copyright 2015 Doug Anderson
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