again, and her hair changes color with the season, first day, now night.
Eyes liner-keened, cigarette in hand, a mouth’s exhalation of Chicago
street steam. White sweeps of snow flutter over curbed piles of grey snow.
It’s a year since she furrowed her arms with a razor. A year before she’ll
try to finish her work, progressing downward. Curious fields they made,
the crooked red crop lines. I think of Cary Grant’s plane-fleeing fugue

in North by Northwest. I think: veins rooted out are at least in sight,
but below, channels are chary and while over winter. A farmer, I sluice
and wait for the front. A mockingbird’s car alarm iterations cut the silence.
She and I know winter well. Out here, in this suburban ecotone, a cold night
makes a clear night for the cutting wind. The raked fibers of her long hair
the wind ripple in the wind; freshly dyed, sour and glossy, they bleed
beyond their halo of light into the sewage-black night air before
she makes a cave of her hood and we set off together.

# # #

Charles Byrne is a teacher and poet in San Francisco, with publications in journals that include After Hours, Clarion, and Poetry Quarterly.

Photo: Bianca Berg