*

*
Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. Leonard Cohen

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Hoarfrost

It was the end of summer
that first time
We should have known
that something would grow
Everything was wild and
unrestrained
Death came
with the last of autumn's foliage
The maple leaves on the ground
red as blood
I raked them into piles
with a fury, desperate
to bring order to turmoil
It must have been December
when I noticed
my heart, covered in hoarfrost
like white mold
on a bruised strawberry,
untouchable and
spoiled.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, FB Friday, Winter

13 comments:

Sherry Blue Sky said...

Oh I so get that....the activity, and the delayed noticing of the hoarfrost around one's heart. I love the word hoarfrost.

Gail said...

Hoarfrost has a life of its own in nature. I love the way you described and compared it here. Great write!

Ella said...

So, vivid is your red and the hoarfrost~
Bravo!

Susan said...

That strawberry said it all for me--summer, fall and winter--the landscape of a heart.

brudberg said...

What a great parallel - the moldy strawberry and the hoarfrost - and all packaged into a metaphor for life itself. Bravo

Kerry O'Connor said...

I love the play on white and red which culminates in your excellent simile.

hedgewitch said...

You hit a lot of high notes in this one, LM, but the whole thing is so smoothly made that no one note kicks any other's butt(as it were) but all gang up on the reader to crystallize a mood and a perfect image at the end. Really well done, really liked it.

Anonymous said...

Perfection

Other Mary said...

I love this! The image of the heart-strawberry is inspired, so unique.

Margaret said...

What amazes me is how Strawberries can fool you. I will buy them and think they look fine - and then under my kitchen light I pick them up and they are mushy or moldy underneath… tricky - This poem does a great job describing the slippery slide of a relationship gone sour…

Fireblossom said...

Perfect, painful, and on point from the first word to the last.

Susie Clevenger said...

Sometimes love dies a slow death...love the visuals in this

Hannah said...

Wow...your use of the organic and color to express imagery and emotions of the heart is so effective. Brilliant work, Lolamouse!