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