January Thaw
Cleveland, Ohio
January 1989
January 1989
cold touched briefly
then suddenly disappeared
with wind-driven
sunshine breathing blue into the sky
and blue into the Lake Erie waters
which in past years might hold
adventurers who dare venture
onto a white frozen plain
walking off the edge into Canada
this morning
the lake laps gently
on the sandy grains and gravel
and it smiles shorely
with the laughing lake gulls
that feast on the few unfrozen fish
littering the beach silver
with bodies half-buried sideways
looking up with one eye up
to an empty space beyond the clouds
and the other eye stares down
into my wandering tracks
that melt into the present
like the jagged outlines
of the downtown skyscrapers
that smooth themselves
to the horizon's distant line
defining the spherical curve
circling cycles
with the shifting shadows
of a northern Ohio winter
// © by wataru ebihara
then suddenly disappeared
with wind-driven
sunshine breathing blue into the sky
and blue into the Lake Erie waters
which in past years might hold
adventurers who dare venture
onto a white frozen plain
walking off the edge into Canada
this morning
the lake laps gently
on the sandy grains and gravel
and it smiles shorely
with the laughing lake gulls
that feast on the few unfrozen fish
littering the beach silver
with bodies half-buried sideways
looking up with one eye up
to an empty space beyond the clouds
and the other eye stares down
into my wandering tracks
that melt into the present
like the jagged outlines
of the downtown skyscrapers
that smooth themselves
to the horizon's distant line
defining the spherical curve
circling cycles
with the shifting shadows
of a northern Ohio winter
// © by wataru ebihara