Winter

'Winter is for women,' she said.

The phoenix has no illusions.

Graveyards and wombs
are both
hollows that refuse to be emptied.
November
is not unlike April,
in another kind of deformity.

Digging for buried treasure
in the act of creation -
Push-Shove-Breathe-Stiffen.
The mercury measures intensity
and then explodes.

The cradle pushed to the edge
where maturity waits matronly,
for the changing of guards.
Rites of initiation that transfix me
into this or that.

My oracle delivers me into doom.
Entrapment has coveted my pride -
So long
So monotonous
So much.
There is no need for surrender,
the mind is a go-between.
Put to test,
the warrior hides
like the serpent from its god.

The struggle for  words,
for lost foothold,
is much too severe,
to take shape and form.

Of a woman am I born, of a man I become.

For eyes that can only dream -
nothing reveals the strength in me.

Some secrets become stories.


November - 2007, 2013.