Winter Implicit

Consuming days like communion wafers
Awaiting the theatrics of the stars
Burning dead illusion somewhere beyond
These swamping atmospheres

Suffering through the wrung-out salt-craving
of the season’s seventy seventh hangover. 

That tree is also an outcropping 
of the dumb earth, but it can crown 
itself again from its own skeleton.

Don’t look at me.  I’m meat bound.  Graying. 
My sons are my blossoms
and their daughters, lost summer. 

And what does Ikkyū say? “Chop open 
the cherry tree.  You’ll find no flowers.  
But the spring breeze brings forth. . .” 
Baseball cherry pop grilled steak and mojitos. 

Winter implicit.  
Winter be damned. 
Winter come again.