Heat Wave
A prolonged heat wave
brings order to our days.
Here in the northern woods
we’re not used to hot weather.
We write letters
through the cool mornings,
swim through
the hot afternoons,
toss through warm nights.
A big red fire engine
blares down
our two-lane road.
Its tires burn rubber,
leaving black brush strokes
as it rounds the corner
in a rush to engage
the flames in combat.
The Cold
On an early morning in March
a gourmet chef walking his dog
discovered two frozen corpses
beneath an expressway underpass.
One wore four layers of clothing,
the other wore just three.
They were stiff & frost-bitten,
fingers & toes a pale, alien blue,
lips white as a high lone cloud.
A nearby shopping cart held
everything they used to own.
One man had the business card
of a rehabilitation center
with a meth dealer’s number
penciled on the back,
folded in half in his shirt pocket,
close to his frozen heart.
The other clutched
a knife in his stiff fist.
The gourmet chef took the day off.
Eric Greinke’s poems and essays have been published in hundreds of American and international literary magazines since the early seventies. He is the author of twenty books, most recently The Third Voice – Notes on the Art of Poetic Collaboration (Presa Press, 2017), Masterplan – Collaborative Poems with Alison Stone (Presa Press, 2018), and Shorelines (Adastra Press, 2018). He is also a Contributing Writer for Schuylkill Valley Journal.