RICHARD L. MATTA

The Dead of Winter

I’m wedged between seasons of falling leaves and sprouting 
     lilies and sink through the crust of what once seemed 

through her windowpane a white birch sawdust sky.
     A saw isn’t a kind tool. The rough serrated sharpness 

of teeth. I remember her half-circles in the wheelchair, 
     as if that passes for beating wings on a ballroom 

dance floor. Not every outcome is as expected, sometimes
     a patient becomes a husk, a maple leaf red as the ripest 

apple whitens overnight, dust from an unpredictable
     sky. There’s no surrender to the distant raspy sound,

no negotiating for immunity from possibility. I imagine
     brushing her hair, gently pulling through a tangle. 

There’s an angle to all of this, the gentle withdrawal 
     from this broken crust. The fragile edges of time.  

Richard L. Matta spent his childhood in the rural Hudson Valley of New York. He now lives in San Diego after many stops  along the way as a scientist, primarily forensic. Some of his work is in Third Wednesday, Hole in the Head Review,  San Pedro River Review, and Healing Muse.