There’s a chill
in the air so wet
that it drips down
the window pane.
I sit and wait on night
to blacken the steel grey sky,
wondering how in hell
things ever got this way,
combing through and through
each conversation,
each blank stare,
each empty dawn bed.

I go down to the sloping banks
to dream of drifting downstream
past the confluence
into the stronger flow
toward the full and teeming ocean
where lie other beaches, the sand
redeeming the crushed shells,
leaving this house
and this cold,
cold war.

by Robert Strickland

Robert Strickland is a bassist, composer, and singer who reads books and writes poems, among other things. He splits his time between Colorado and Florida. His poetry has appeared, or is scheduled to appear, in Pale Horse Review, A Handful Of Stones, and Houseboat, where he was recently the featured poet.