‘Winter into Spring Sonnet’ by Jedediah Smith

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Winter into Spring Sonnet

The garbage dump outside the town is white
as winter’s snowfall claims the castoff chair
from autumn’s cluttered leavings, hid from sight
in drifts, the broken dinette set left there
for rats to nest below, before degrees
had dropped too low to stay when there is more
of hope in cellars’ possibilities
with windows left ajar on seasons’ stores.
The dump, remaining pure until the spring,
is suited as a picture to be framed
in a white smock that shapes a lying thing,
a butcher’s morning apron still unclaimed
by the day’s blood, that necessary mess,
the sustenance with which the world does bless.

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Recently retired, Jedediah Smith taught literature at the City College of San Francisco and lives now in Concord, CA. More of his work can be read at jedediahsmith.net and in publications including Reed Magazine, Midwest Quarterly, and Flash Fiction Magazine.