Jack Frost begins his three-day gig tonight when 12 a.m. temps fall to the age of college sophomores lacking AP credits. An eternal optimist, I winter garden, hoping to make Monet’s brush strokes edible, in my four, 80-square-foot, French Biodynamic beds. Euphonious winter lettuces that glow like ruby peonies or emerald-leaved camellias: Brune d’Hiver, Merlot, and Red Sails. Kale cultivars embrace frost, and their sage-green to rosy bodies make them as luscious as freshly licked nipples on an arching chest. With Mr. Frost imminent, I mosey out to the garage for my bed blankets: thin, muslin-like sheets of spun synthetic, that hug ground, and hold temperatures a few degrees above icicle air. Pulling these bed-clothes over my plants, I anchor each corner with a russet clay brick, discarded from my neighbor’s last remodel, which leads me to thoughts about the barriers we grow ourselves to cloak true feelings: depression, abuse, languidness, and lust, and how these mantles vary in thickness from millimeters to inches—a smiling mouth with down-turned corners rather than tears. And yearning to peel back those mantles, like my garden covers, post-frost, I grasp that all we desire is a body three or four degrees warmer than our own, next to us in bed.

Gary Grossman,

Professor Emeritus of Ecology at University of Georgia, has poems, short fiction, and essays in 47 literary reviews. His work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and the Pushcart Prize for 2023. For 10 years Gary wrote “Ask Dr. Trout” for American Angler magazine. His poetry books Lyrical Years (Kelsay Press) and What I Meant to Say Was... (Impspired Press), and his graphic memoir My Life in Fish: One Scientist’s Journey (Impspired Press, 2023) all may be purchased from Amazon.

Author’s website: www.garygrossman.net

And his blog: https://garydavidgrossman.medium.com/