In The Last Gusts

I haven't done anything in the past
four days,
except exist.

Sure, I've drifted
over the railroad tracks like a tuft
on the breezes.

Sure I've climbed to the top of the abandoned
trains, with their rust rubbing off.

Nothing can be done
in the final currents of Spring,
except let the breezes take you,
I've concluded.

Nothing can be done while
the Summer bulges about to burst, pulling
everything up into its pause.

As we float towards
that breathless state, Summer.

The lion let loose, lazily
being a lion.

The dandelions set loose,
knowing exactly what to do
on their currents of Spring.

Following the suggestions of the wind and
its invisible mumblings.

I've done nothing in the past four days
except watch the dandelions
prepare for summer.

I've done nothing
except wear the rust of giant trains
standing on their backs in the last gusts

before the lion walks.

Fondest Memory

The girl was young and full of synthetic sugars.

She walked by pale in the Spring day sun
after a long night of sitting on gravestones.

Meeting her friends with black eyeliner
in the depths of the public park
after the streetlamps went dark.

Each with a sad compulsion.
Each with a cloud companion of loneliness.

Their little clouds hovering above them as they moved
about the town.

We could see them drifting like bruises by the creek,
smoking cigarettes together in their private storms,
drizzling onto the water's edge, onto stones...

Or over in the plaza
under the town's statue of heroism.

The tall soldier looking resolute into the past symbolizing nothing.

Nothing but the town, just a place
where rain clouds gather.

And a few memories about sadness.

When rain washed mascara down cheeks
and the waters rose.

When the creek in the night wouldn't stop
and rose and kept on rising.

And so many little twigs were set loose from branches.
And so many twigs were set spinning over black currents.

This was the closest to home they felt
when the Earth was lost.

This was their fondest memory of how they lost.

Frozen Blossoms

we thought it was the end

we thought that the white skies

were in the past, but we think this

every year when April comes, like fools

we think this, marching on into the warm days

as if we found new life, as if we found

an opening, oblivious

of what's next, oblivious of what's waiting

like a frozen mountain range at the edge

of the week, that we will all have to climb,

that comes every year, this week

of the April fools telling each other

that before we know it, warm nights

will be here too, telling each other that the warm days

are here to stay, this week of walking through the park

in our short sleeves, our summer attitudes

donned, falling on the park grasses, lying still in

the park grasses in the tree patterns, watching

the ducks be ducks without a care, the reflections

in the ponds as their own purpose...

The great nonchalance of Summer descending, until we wake

to the last wisp of Winter reaching

into Spring, and our winter coats, our gray

clouds, our curses, are pulled from closets,

our wool bodies dark against the white fields,

our Summer temperaments dropping

with the frozen blossoms.