How Winter Came

It must have snowed on the avenue
of the poets everything is white
not that anyone cares when
there are shows on Netflix
and later a football game
it’s a sunny day and water runs off
from the red-tile roofs as the snow
continues to melt from an upper-
story window you can see brown fields
and a great burst of starlings
exploding from a copse
I’m sitting in the kitchen drinking
clean water and microplastics from
a cold bottle it might be killing me slowly
but it’s a choice I’ve decided to make
I spend too much time driving back
and forth waiting in lines
there is such toxicity even in the air
we breathe look back at your lifetime
the games you played as a child
the teacher who made a difference
it all adds up to something significant
there are invisible patterns which tangle
in the air tracks of birds and snowflakes
an indirect line from spring to winter.

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