portion of the artwork for Kevin Casey's poem

Birthday Postcard
Kevin Casey

With the first full week of May behind us,
the air is thick and drowsy with vapor
at two-thousand feet. A final drift of snow
glimmers in the noon sun—a winter shipwreck
lodged behind a spruce-topped ridge.

Crouching on the granite, I form three spheres
from this arch of snow grown rough and littered
with balsam chaff, and give the foot-tall snowman
a hat of moss, raise a twig arm in greeting.

Texting you a photo of this small golem,
I think of you another year older,
smiling at your little brother who seeks
these isolating heights to give shape
and voice to a divided soul, and his stunted
effigy, waving from his mountain
to your whole and generous spirit
wandering among the fragrant dogwood
somewhere in your warm and distant valley.


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FRiGG: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry | Issue 50 | Fall/Winter 2017