Ontario by Matthew Milia

I held three strands
But I lost one
Dark as the lands
Surrounding Boston
On the train that backscratched the windows
The backs of the houses, pulsing the rain glows
That sick man so shiny in his slump
Doubled over like a water pump
He was dribbling out from his nostrils
Onto his ankles leaking like Aprils
Yeah the thaw had already begun
We could hear the earshot from your cabin
In the holy boldness your cheeks purpled and pinked
There in the coldness with some sort of instinct
Oh the fluency, me with my hands cupped
Catching currency that you made it erupt
The quiet of spilling right after the stilling
Why it was chilling our hot windowsilling
I see your stature when breathing and turning
Smoking the black blur as if something’s burning
Remember the gray-slate coming of some thrill
The low sky of too-late up on Bunker Hill

And the whirling eddies sprayed off the semi’s tail
The curling snow-traps of your hair
Feeling warm inside the swarms of hail
The foreign planet of some diner we found there

So my brother and I saddle up some horse
And watch the snow thinning with the thawing
Another will die, rattle me so coarse
Will it leave me grinning or awing?

In Ontario