Snowflakes on a Hardening Land

I am tired of beauty.
Its touch grows colder
across the landscape of lost dreams,
holding hostage the memory
of when beauty had a different face to tire of.
Winter grows harder each day,
and now I cannot see much beyond
the iceberg of my nose.

Fashion is fickle,
but now cold hearts are in style.
Everything wears a gown of snowflakes.
A beautiful snow-woman offers no warmth.
In this land, no snow-angels point the way to fire.
The flag stands guard, at stiff attention.

Lost in the blizzard, the river shivers and clots.
Empty nests fill with young snow.
Memories and eyes freeze shut.
Still, old hopes keep a small fire burning,
feel the face of beauty growing old,
then young, then old again.
In hard times, touch must be the vision
that senses clouds breaking,
the warm lighthouse of sun shining through.





Robert S. King, a native Georgian, now lives in the mountains near Hayesville, NC. His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, including California Quarterly, Chariton Review, Hollins Critic, Kenyon Review, Lullwater Review, Main Street Rag, Midwest Quarterly, Negative Capability, Southern Poetry Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. He has published three chapbooks (When Stars Fall Down as Snow, Garland Press 1976; Dream of the Electric Eel, Wolfsong Publications 1982; and The Traveller’s Tale, Whistle Press 1998). His full‐length collections are The Hunted River and The Gravedigger’s Roots, both in 2nd editions from FutureCycle Press, 2012; and One Man's Profit from Sweatshoppe Publications, 2013. His personal website is www.robertsking.com.