March

by David Cope

white dawnlight thru my windows, thru fronds of cycad & spathphylum — fierce light after months of storm & sigh, turning from death to death —

now foreclosures — gruff men once hipsters or marines hair trimmed back after thirty years, pushing mowers snowblowers shooting hoops with kids

thin women with long hair & hard wise eyes, tough women at the mailbox, all gone after long decades, houses gone dark, curtainless windows, empty

driveway — fat cats disappear with millions after shanking the economy, thousands tramping streets, fruitless, families coming apart nowhere to go.

after painting ceiling where roof leak burst thru last summer, I sit alone silently & listen, tender moments passing, ephemeral yet precious after

so much death & sorrow. In my dream, we scatter roses on the river in July where last year we spread our mother’s ashes, just upstream from her old

bedroom, near moraine bank where I once risked all to save a  drowning dog, clambering across ice & falling in myself, later feted on evening news —

the procession of the dead, everyday dia de muertos, mother father mentor brother father of a friend now racing thru my brains, their fragile memory

all that remains — easily scattered, lost, erased to all in deadline & routine: thus this fierce light thru fronds raising my eye to this day, this touch.