visit

When the winter sun comes

Through slotted windows by the bar,

And the storm melts off your roof

Like all the other roofs for miles,

When the dawn is clean and blue

And the one who needs sleep does not wake--

When the sparrows flit between browned

Mounds of street snow, and the anger of the restaurant bubbles—

When the future tense draws blood

Though you muscle into it with eyes unaverted

At questions of “Philadelphia? Organizing?
A life of spirit?”—

When your soul cub draws the bus card

And slingshots down the interstate,

Curbside bard in a Canadian tux shrugging off

A winter of war, of debt into tight rolled

Belly laughs shivering through two skins goosebumped against touch—

Destiny isn’t something

Apart from all the rest.

This is the moment on which it all hangs

In balance. I feel it when the contacts

Last too long and blur the world,

or when they bail on meetings.

Everything is held when we are afraid,

When we hold each other with tears,

When the campaign flounders

And when the magnolia trees whisper of spring.

This cold light is breaking through to something hard and deep.

What to do with a day?

As green sleeps beneath, my heart

Retreats into its known homes.

But that is not for us, my wind.

That is not for us.

We blow through sun and rain,

We cherish the seasons.

Though at times we seem still,

Always is when, always is when,

We are moving. Ours cannot be buried.