William Doreski

Silver and Black

A flutter of silver and black

streaks in peripheral vision

frames the daily snowstorm.

Those are people holding signs

to protest the latest outrage.

Or maybe they’re the residue

of victims adrift on global

currents too strong to resist.

I lean over the bridge rail

and admire the Rorschach of ice

forming where two rivers meet.

The snow fondles me all over,

the last of my wanton lovers.

The black streaks could be death

ripped from neoclassical texts.

Not actual death but an argument

about the interstices of the past

corroding the useable present.

The silver could be the tint

of my unruly old man’s hair

ransacking imperceptible winds.

I return to my roadside position

and wave my sign: America

for Workers Not Billionaires.

The silver and black converge

as passing traffic honks and yells

curses or praise, silver or black,

the snow absorbing the pain.

Scolding the world in public

eases the dark congealing

in your shapely, old-fashioned skull.

The coffee shop hums. Urns deplete

as snow whirls in the doorway.

Baked goods hunker on display.

 You speak loudly to allow

the woolen opposition to hide

behind phrases heard on TV.

Yet no one shouts or even speaks.

You’ve engendered a silence

too dense for the digital world

to violate. Your mouth turns down

like a crescent moon warning

of far worse weather to come.

(first published in Breathe)

Stones in the bed of the spillway,

each one crowned with a snow-cap,

suggest how tidy winter can be

when mood permits. I lean

over the rail to count the stones.

A hundred and thirty-seven,

plus those hidden under the bridge.

Frozen for a month now, the lake

is a lens through which a grave

intelligence ponders the world.

Sadly, it’s a cataract of ice,

rendering the vision so grainy

it can’t possibly tell the truth.

I should step back and take a photo,

but the subject’s so amorphous

in its endless shades of white

that I can hardly distinguish it

from myself. An historic spot,

claims a sign posted nearby.

Another sign warns boaters

to clean their hulls and avoid

spreading a pernicious alga.

I think I’ve been spreading

a mental alga all my life.

I wield my camera to frame

the spillway without revealing

the lake lying sullen behind it.

That half-blind lens follows me

step by step, compelling me to think

in larger terms than I like.