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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The End of Winter <\/span><\/p>\n by\u00a0Adrian Slonaker<\/p>\n In the early eighties One Thursday afternoon, ###<\/p>\n Adrian Slonaker works as a copywriter and copy editor in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. Adrian’s work has appeared in\u00a0Aberration Labyrinth, Squawk Back, The Bohemyth, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Pangolin Review<\/i>\u00a0and others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Adrian Slonaker works as a copywriter and copy editor in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. Adrian’s work has appeared in Aberration Labyrinth, Squawk Back, The Bohemyth, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Pangolin Review and others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3570,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[408,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nature-poems","category-poem"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nwhen we still believed in the coming Ice Age
\nas much as we trusted in Pac-Man’s ghostkilling capabilities,
\nfrigid Great Lakes winters were the norm,
\nwith Himalayas of snow sloping onto
\nsinister ice patches where you could
\nslip and split your Jordaches,
\nif not your head.
\nPlunging wind chills be damned,
\nrecess was still held outside
\nwhile our unseen teacher likely cradled
\na much-needed cigarette
\nbetween mittened fingers.<\/p>\n
\nbetween king-of-the-mountain challenges,
\nTraci-
\nthe girl-with-the-pixie-cut-and-the-runny-nose-and-the-Garfield-backpack-
\ninvited me to follow her
\npast the shivering Jennifers exhaling
\nhopscotch hymns through
\nchattering teeth
\nand under obscenely naked maples
\nto an outdoor crawlspace
\nbetween the scratchy red brick of
\nthe weatherbeaten school fa\u00e7ade and
\na big khaki-colored mechanical thinggummy
\nthat radiated heat.
\nHere in this gap
\nwas the world’s smallest microclimate,
\nwith thaw rather than Thule,
\nand pointing to the preposterous purple flowers
\namong tenacious tufts of grass,
\nTraci concluded, \u201cit’s spring here.\u201d
\nI don’t remember whether Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow that year,
\nbut I was convinced I knew
\nwhere the seasons changed.<\/p>\n