Northern

I know he scares you
Gazing blue like icicles
hard tack for breath
And his strange gait
horse shaped.
It’s a saying,
he says,
a homily
for my family.
We know it’s not for us.
When I take out the bin
he is waiting
hands spread on the side of his pickup
he is arrested by me
taken in
a criminal of epic
lines.
The one you never were.
I let him be.
He could be you
and that scares me too.

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