Wednesday, March 18, 2020

THE JUICY PART

It's the middle of March—
when everything in nature

is frail, under-confident,
dingy, immature.

The trees are not ready.
The sky is dingy gray.

Wind gusts are obliterating even
the sparrows' rainy praying.

If we are lucky, they're saying, tomorrow
we may still be here to remember

today, and just how instrumentally
we treated each other. But

if life were an allegory, this
would be the juicy part—right before

whats feel like a hard dead-end
turns out to be the porous middle,

the abandoned well we've fallen into
is revealed to be a magic portal,

and all that surplus gunpowder
hastily manufactured for the war

gets ingeniously re-purposed
to make frivolous fireworks

so that little children can clap
while their grandparents sigh

because no matter how black
and dispassionate the night,

tomorrow, our orientation
to the rest of the solar system

will shift on its own
ever so slightly,

and this whole place
will be angled just right

for a change
toward the light.