Waste another hour as if back in prison
when the world is elsewhere:
wall & razor made from snow flattening hillsides
with portraits of paleness, clouding roads,
filling in the potholes with despair.

I sleep as I did then, robbing time
from storm’s sentence.
Maybe I dream but awaken & forget.

The white river has come to rest,
trapping me in its natural penitentiary,
binding me with shackles I could break
out of, don’t dare risk my life
on a whim for pizza or sex, a trip
to the store or a concert in a lovely bar
where the pianist plays songs
of siesta, lulling me back to my cell,

convicted of warm-
blooded wanderlust, a weather pattern.

– Ace Boggess