Winter's News Cycle
We nap in our small suburban caves
waiting for the next news bulletin
to roil over: unintended martyrs,
gunfire hidden in foils of thunder,
violence in crippling ice storms,
strange showers of amber gas with
pepper spray thick enough to blind
or kill if we are shoved and fall downWithout charity but cruel aim, strangers
strike the brown, the helper, the foreign,
while winter whirls off kilter gathering
strength like cloaked soldiers training for
the last war, with drumming so distant
we pretend it's only the tiresome downbeat
of a high school band at practice and
no active shooters hide, biding their time.
