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Winter Nights in Temperatures of Blue
by Phibby Venable
 
A back drop in rough mounds of purple hills
It does no good to look or wish away
white silence from the wide expanse of gray
For in the evening, blue and gray fall down
and slip from sky lap to the hardened ground
And I, once more, am stranded in my thoughts
of how one missing heart empties a house
The limbs could be wild jazzmen holding horns
in tangled frolics frozen by the ice
they blow their voices into freezing wind
through indigo cold branches that won't bend
but crack like sharpened thunder in the night
in sudden breaks that clatter on the ice
not like the way you went in slow degrees
your heart too weak but willing in the fight
How can such suffering ever be allowed
no choices, just a grappling with the shroud
that never tastes the horror of defeat
But I think I was speaking here of trees
exposed and vulnerable to winter's storm
and bluesmen caught in branches holding tight
valiant against the hard abuse of night
Still with a hope or two shoved up their sleeves
with wind songs as a their gift this somber eve
and music mingling loneliness to quiet.

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