The pond is frozen over with ice stars. When I look them up on my new iPhone 16, fleece pajamas for the grandkids pop up instead. It’s nearly Christmas, stick season. Small dark birds I can’t identify forage near the stone wall and the footprints in crusty snow left when I searched for an arrow my grandson had shot into a tree. Forced-air heat makes a racket. I have to wear earplugs at night, plus it dries my lips and legs. I want a fresh pouf, the old orange one is leaking little plastic beads. Oh no, my phone says fleece is made of plastic, maybe flannel is better. But I already bought fleece loungewear in a color called Cake Batter. It keeps me warm and guilty. Adam next door has piled dead wood twelve feet high. I wonder how he’ll keep the whole forest from becoming the bonfire. That would be deadly and spectacular. When I google fire safety, “It’s like a pina colada” comes up, so while true snow falls, I remember lying in the bottom of Nate’s boat, he is on top of me, or wait, was that Mark? I know rum was involved. Today I drink dealcoholized wine, which costs as much as the real stuff. Maybe I’ll learn to think of water as reward. In the novel I’m reading, terrorists try to poison a city’s drinking supply. I try to imagine air insecurity, which would mean nothing (ness). Keep breathing. Decide not to worry as if worrying is a choice.
By Clive Donovan has three poetry collections, The Taste of Glass [Cinnamon Press 2021], Wound Up With Love [Lapwing 2022] and Movement of People [Dempsey&Windle 2024] and is published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Agenda, Crannog, Popshot, Prole, Rats Ass Review and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon, UK. He was a Pushcart and Forward Prize nominee for 2022’s best individual poems.
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