Southern Ice

by Perry L. Powell

Under the magnolia a storm is brewing. The four and twenty blackbirds are holding congress. But so quiet on the surface, what would we suspect? Someone else is always counting out our money.  Nothing different in that. We are running our numbers along new lines these days.  And anyway honey is so sticky on our fingers.  We could not put our three minds on such as that.  Icicles in the south is an irretrievable concept.  Even in the dead of night.  But now it’s morning and the snow falls gently on all our streets. It falls on the streets of the righteous and it falls on the streets of sinners.  It falls and it falls and soon all motion ceases and the quiet is like molasses over all our skins.  I sit at my window and watch the tree.  And when there is but a touch of sun, the blackbirds scatter into the great gray sky.