Another Dark Winter by Jeffrey Zable

ANOTHER DARK WINTER

How would I know why night follows day!

I can’t even tell you why my tongue craves liquids

that burn in the throat. What I do know

is that it was another dark winter and my bones

turned from white to black in the blink of an eye.

That the crows stopped crowing and froze in the air

in just about every part of the world except where

the ground is full of weeds that strangle each other

for space. Otherwise, voices can still be heard

at the bottom of canyons— voices so muffled

that no one above can understand what they’re saying,

and so they just throw food down there on occasion

and ropes that always seem to break, no matter

how strong they were to begin with.

Jeffrey Zable is a teacher, conga drummer/percussionist who plays for dance classes and rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area, and a writer of poetry, flash-fiction,

and non-fiction. He's published five chapbooks and his writing has appeared in hundreds

of literary magazines and anthologies, more recently in Rundelania, Misfit, Streetcake,

Piker Press, Corvus, The Argyle, The Ravens Perch, Datura, Bramble and many others.

His selected poetry, "When I'm Dead and Feeling Blue" is now available from Amazon

or directly from Androgyne Books.