FLANNEL ON A RAINY AFTERNOON

From the solitude of a worn pelt recliner,
he leapt in dreams across the gray outdoors,
one tacit puff encircled his pipe,
gnarled hands thumbing the dog-eared pages of a novel
he had no intention to read.
Another frosty log tossed onto the dwindling hearth.
Another day, indifferent - best spent in bed,
or the next best thing;
crocheted across his knees,
tired leathery toes peeking beneath
that hemmed drape strewn about the floor,
and flannel; soothing, soft and familiar,
as the cloistered remembrances
of one woman’s stroke about his waist,
Dresden tantalizer swathed about his neck.

Some thirty years turned under gray,
traveling the backward carousel of still images,
swirling, twirling; finally, sputtering along
as tickled half-frozen droplets across the window.
Sliding in veins on a grand race
to their collected rest upon the sill.
If only the dragging hours kept his secrets well,
he wouldn’t mind being alone,
in flannel, on this rainy afternoon.


@Nick Zegarac 2006 (all rights reserved).