This cold that takes residence in,
chills,
and sets your bones.
You’re seated inside but you might as well have been
walking outside in a Wellesley winter.
Seated in these stone houses:
borrowed, gifted, stolen, forced-
they were not meant for the
unwarmed cold.
They come with chimneys,
diligently built into every sitting room.
And as diligently used
to prop wooden flowerpots,
store old newspapers,
and confound the odd bat
that flies down instead of up.
So we freeze on in silence
Muscles tired from the constant shivering-
Buy an electric heater
and wonder what they said
about changing climates….
It is already August.
