So many poems are about poems.
So many poems are read only
by other poets or—a few—by persons grieving,
hunting for a match for the eulogy,
because poetry taps into our mournful centers
and we seek certain sounds more than meanings, or a sense
of knowing. We are satisfied with suggestions.
After nineteen days of sunshiny cold, our city
returned to its better-known self which is wet-streaked windows,
rain-soaked smells of soil, swishings of cars through shallows
where streets once stretched, and to its preparations for mysteries
by knitting shocking pink hats and scrawling slogans on severed box lids.
No one knows whether a frozen patch
of hard clear days or a week of warm deluges
lies ahead, not until we get there
and witness the corpse.
