Smoldering Dreams

Smoldering Dreams 

— a golden shovel poem after Robert Frost, author of Bond and Free

Please, don’t cast your love 

on me, I fear I’ll splinter. Why has

the wide-open country withered to earth

and bone. To circling walls. To 

snow — smothering that which 

ventures out. A dream she

had — that girl I was. She clings

to tender promises, shattered with

bruising fingers. Now the hills

are frozen in the violet twilight and

the starry sky eclipsed by circling 

crimson clouds — a trembling thought: These arms

are not made to carry love. For once I stumbled about.

Noel Vanderbilt