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Winter Mornings on 17th Street, a poem by Samuel T. Franklin

Winter Mornings on 17th Street
by Samuel T. Franklin


The sky tumbles to Earth and shatters
to ice. Snow folds like colorless oceans
and shifts, greedy, across the trees.

The creek shines clear and clean
as wiped porcelain. A man in dark wool
studies the frozen currents,

drops twigs and pine needles on the ice
and tries to conjure some prophecy of spring.
Wind slips subtle as a thorn

through jackets and gloves.
I do not know this city,
and the ravens are quiet.

The man in dark wool stands,
hopeless, the twigs piled at his feet,
burned by invisible fire.



Samuel T. Franklin is mostly from Indiana, by way of Clayton, Terre Haute, and Bloomington. His first book, The God of Happiness (Main Street Rag Publishing Co.), was published in 2016. He can be found at samueltfranklin.wordpress.com.