Squeeze Me, Universe

sun cajoles spare rainbows

from icicle tips

in the still afternoon.

were they inevitable, these

meetings of solar display

and refracting pieces

of frozen sky?

it's when everything else

also sings your liberation

that the creaky thaw of Righteousness

really opens the floes -

a humming old fridge,

beige cotton paper under a casual thumb.

freed by the terminal illness of life,

now appreciation

comes in hemlock fronds, a neat firewood stack,

ice mounds dressing the whole scene

with the appropriateness of love.

all medicine is a little poisonous -

a truism resting on my shoulder

with tiny claws and bright eyes,

hungry to soar in the cold sun.