The trees know first. An ice storm is moving in.
I’m still holding back trouble I’ve carried
around in my mind for two days. Yet
some worries are always there. Must admit
it has felt like an empty year. At midnight
I come to bed in pitch black, but nothing
brings relief in the clinging cold.
All night I live with cracking branches, the wind
refusing to die down, and still awake
at four a.m. with my brain beating
under this blurred sky. The slim birches, stripped
of color, flex down and over in the freezing
darkness. Then the sky clears, the white
trunks straighten by dawn, as in any storm.
About Anthony Botti
Anthony Botti's poetry has appeared recently in Comstock Review, The MacGuffin, Cider Press Review, Caveat Lector, Clark Street Review, Old Red Kimono, Tiger’s Eye, The Rockford Review, and Peregrine. He lives in Boston with his partner and their pug, Ernie, where he works in health care management at Harvard University.
