Cold Fronts
Pale breaths hanging, useless words.
White-knuckled ice tightening its grip
on cement steps, wind chimes,
drooping power lines.
Months of piled-up mountains of snow
in abandoned shopping malls,
failing daylight frozen
on the slanted slopes, jagged Carpathians.
The nights? Snowplows barreling past,
tanks curling the dark overhead,
streetlights wobbling in fog,
people knotted up on street corners,
red fingers clenched in the palms
of fists, refugees.
Ron Stottlemyer lives in Helena, Montana. After a long career as a professor/scholar, he has returned to his love of writing poetry. His work has appeared in Alabama Literary Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Streetlight Magazine, West Texas Literary Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Rust and Moth, Split Rock Review, the Peregrine Journal and others. His poem “Falling” (Twyckenham Notes, Summer 2018), was awarded a Pushcart Prize, appearing in the 2020 edition of the anthology.