I Never Mind the Rain

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.