One Poem: <i>Sylvia Plath Goes Sledding in Stockbridge, MA, Stops to Enjoy The View</i>

Sylvia Plath Goes Sledding in Stockbridge, MA, Stops to Enjoy the View

It starts without a sound
Light waves fill empty spaces
And the hairs on our grey and sallow faces
Are sprouting white like
Snow, the diamond traces of water
Falling harder.

To look up, higher than man is able,
And be blinded -- we sacrifice flesh in repentance
To the fake warmth of earthen fires
The pyres we build below a shining greatness
Have the twisted tails of grey ghosts
Voices, smoke, or smoldered embers --
Wisps of matter, some are dark like
Teeming clouds threatening birth to the fields.

The bark on trees begins to rot,
Somber is the kingdom where
The sky is still crumbling dirtied leaves
Into the ashen wind.

And where one set of eyes looks
Out of a frosted street side window to see
A freezer-burnt Earth, the other set of eyes
Lit like new cinder, like two diamond traces of life
Chases the sky, still spinning
Not ready to fall or
Cast a forlorn gaze onto frozen waters,
And tumble into piles of grit and
Flaking tree skin.

Something is still afloat yet
Attached, Detached
While co-dependent
Traces of water are
Falling harder into spinning sky.