IAM Commemorates National Poetry Month

Snow globes have such a sad

reality; there’s never a moment

when a sun crests its heat      

over plexi-glass ozone

to melt its delicate cold away.

It settles
snow-globe-slow
after a shake which scatters each particle

like the spectators at an opera house at intermission who float

back to their seats just

in time for the final act. It dusts

everything during that brief interlude

between the prolonged and deep silences

with ceaseless, long-lasting, abandoned

hope: a punctuation of each repeated fall.

When leaves drop in November there’s always a knock 
at the door; someone who’ll sweep them neatly

into thirty gallon, black bags pulled

taut with bright red draw-strings to be carted away the very next day.

By December, already, we anticipate the Spring.

I’ve traveled often in the woods: noted that permanent

bed of leaves cast underfoot

(the ancient giants no longer nimble at the joint
don’t bend
to pick them up).
Come late summer they’ll still remain: deep

banks that shelter the decay.

In quiet the arbors

wait for the next season to stir the prolix of leaves

—the gossip of the trees.

I stood to watch the yard boy rake them into neat piles;

he was clearly of humble origin. He was strong and hard at work, reclaiming

each leaf from the threat of breezes. He sang gospel

at the wind.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound.

He kept sweeping up decay

How precious did that grace appear

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,

but my decay was raked

away, bundled into bags and carted away.