Chicago: The Coldest Day (January 18, 1994)

Cynthia Clampitt

The brilliant, unforgiving day
dawns diamond-hard.  With blazing clarity
the frozen air sparkles, and cuts, like glass.
I try to conjure heat, and fail,
try to compel the golden haze
of summer dreams to grow and
overcome the blue-white cold
that stabs at me with brittle fingers,
testing my mortality. 

The sun sticks to the frozen metal
of the sky, its heat trapped, its light
glinting off the knife-edge of the day.

My breath, turned crystal, shatters in my lungs.
My heart and spirit chill as blood and feeling
creep away from all my edges, and I must retreat. 

The cold does not give up as easily as I,
and slashes at me still as I escape.  It pounds
the door, and creeps between the bricks.
Gazing from a window etched with frost,
I blow on purple fingers, rub life into
ice-burned ears, admire the deadly beauty
of my foe, and wish it gone. 
It is too pure and powerful for me.

Cynthia Clampitt is the author of the travel journal Waltzing Australia.