Courting December

I am fascinated by the reedy, hard
red lines that come to be sketched
across the uneven avalanche of my body
I am in love with the absence
of such landmarks on the unveiled
and snowy chicanes of yours

Why am I more lacerated than you?
And here I thought your indecency
would be the undoing of Envy!
Instead you make it more humbling

You should know I'm a child of the winter
with pondfrost irises and stripped willow hair
a thin, grey face and a rough diamond voice
My zodiac is a goat with a trout's tail
a clumsy, wretched, shaggy and scaled beast
There's nothing of the azure and golden boy in me

You should know you are the season
between the fresh vine of a young man
who loves you from the white of his stem
to the tough knots of his thinnest branches

and the perished poet who writes odes
to the chilblains beneath his heavy boots
who is flushed with success and failure
pecked at by all the little birds they send for him
drawn to the glow of the forge
but stoops to scrape for food

You should know that you thaw me out
Every man needs to thaw as often as he can
Why not in the heat of your clutches
Why not in your humbling beauty