The last day of November, 4:00pm.
pouring rain, nearly dark.
If you’ve ever lived in New England,
you know what I mean– dank, the kind
of chill that’s hard to get out
from inside your bones,
and how what you want more
than anything is to cancel everything,
climb under the covers,
turn on the twinkle lights
and off the news,
and get cozy.
As we ducked into the car,
I said this would be great
in the spring– just think of the flowers!
And that’s when she reminded me:
The rain rots the leaves,
and that rot becomes the most fertile
place for beautiful and wild things
to grow. Obviously you hear
the metaphor and run home
to write about it, but then autocorrect
changes things to thugs
and suddenly beautiful wild thugs
are growing out of the rot,
taking the dark humor
and making it into something new,
something with a whiff of hope
you might catch on your way
from this season to the next.
Let’s be beautiful, let’s be wild,
let’s turn things into thugs
and thugs back into things
that grow from the mulch
and have survived this and worse.
It’s the last day of November
and nothing is what we imagined.
I will not tell you to get over it,
but here — stand under my umbrella
until the skies clear.
The sun’s up there somewhere.
30/30
**
Thanks to all of you for keeping me going writing 30 poems in 30 days. Because of your generous support, I met my personal goal of raising $500 for the Center for New Americans. (If you’re so moved, you can still contribute.
This was a fabulous practice for me, and sparked me to finally get cracking on my third collection. “Why I Was Late for Our Meeting” (working title) is in the works. Stay tuned!