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.
