A winter to forget

A dead rat was swept out with impunity
from under a gleaming car
A news report perished under an album
Fireworks lighted up reluctant moods
in a sweeping display of defiance
In Night’s dance bar,
a whistling wind frosted the panes
White fingers grappled with warm blood
as dead spirits laughed at dying ones.

Stopped hands of the clock froze time
An obsolete December hung from a rusty nail
Brown coconuts grew gnarled in a shed
The new calf scrambled onto unsteady feet
ready to run at the slightest breeze
oblivious to the absence of an old man
who stepped off the time train
two days before the new year
whose ashes still swirl around the tin shack
where he used to sit and smoke.
-Reena Prasad