Remember last April when stepping outside
meant entering an idea made of lilac
until a surprise thunderstorm broke
the youngest trees to the ground,
even then life thrashing against itself?
Now it’s winter, nothing to fight or fix.
No fast car pulling up to the filling station
of the imagination, vying for high-octane.
Just a forecast of one cold gray ocean
of a day after another and the living room
with its big-eyed windows and tired wooden floor,
salvaged from a mental hospital years ago
when winter was colder and more trustworthy.
When I wasn’t yet a mother, an animal who knew
her territory in the length of unbroken sleep
and the number of bananas left.
I’m watching it all now. The apex of light
from a ceiling fixture, the lopsided moonrise,
the glow from the room down the hall asking
what do you have to say for yourself
that will not dissolve into coffee tomorrow,
into snow maybe tonight, into obnoxiously
beautiful lilac next spring, so heavy
that they weigh themselves down to decay.
But this is not a poem about seasonal decline
or any sturdy chair of reckoning.
No, it’s about what’s right outside the poem,
riding side-car to any life, the shadow
that can’t be named but nevertheless
takes us in, says, look at me.
