You don’t much like heat.
So no to sirocco.
You think you might like
snow riffing off the roof,
crystal mist in sunlight. Not enough
meat on your bones. Too skinny.
No northeasters. No polar oppositions.
Crazy-making scares you.
Try to use katabatic
in a conversation
with the blind man.
So no to Santa Ana’s.
No wildfires. No desiccation.
Nor dust bowls and displacements.
You’d never find your way back.
Sea breeze sounds like a paint
on walls in a gas station restroom.
Pirates defy the sigh of trade winds.
You could tinker with little dervishes,
twirler devils on a plateau. Except
you get dizzy easily. You fall down.
Too old. You lost your whirling chance.
Be content
as a breath curled near my neck.
a
Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet who knows blizzards well. Her work appears widely in journals, anthologies and in five collections. Her recent chapbook Checkered Mates came out in 2021 from Kelsay Books. Let’s Hear It for the Horses received the third prize in the Poetry Box’s annual chapbook competition and will be available in February 2022. For more poems and news, visit triciaknoll.com.
© 2021, Tricia Knoll
Halfway Down the Stairs 
Such a tender, beautiful poem, with a lovely ending, calling up images of lover and child.
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