Late March slumps against Lake Michigan –
Cold and brown with patches of crusted snow frozen to the face
of the obstinate earth, wind whips the eyes and tears freeze;
Perhaps, then, we can be absolved, when watching
the mute six o’clock news during the Friday fish fry, Brandy Old Fashioneds in hand,
we see coverage of a tornado in Kentucky, and our eyes are drawn not
to the carnage and twisted metal trailers –
but just beyond to the shining wet green grass
and just budding magnolias, the fat robins hopping from jutting fencepost
to prostrate Toyota, the swollen rivers lapping, lapping
at the tender and torn black earth,
we see not the cops and barricades
or small business owners sweeping up shards of glass but the
way that the clouds are pulled up over the rich and fertile naked fields
just plowed and waiting for seeds to be pressed
deep in the furrows, to take hold of the
earth like fists to unfaithful lapels, like the first
bite of the first apple, like a steel trap suddenly seizing
in mid-lope the trespassing wolf
and then just as suddenly we are let go,
our eyes wide, cherry winter breath exhaled, our brown hills in the distance
coming again into focus, our mind awash in the receding wave upon wave, the promise
of blossoms and warm wind, the tilt of the earth coming back to us,
flush at our table, a waitress with a stiff apron with wide pockets
and a chewed up Bic, a nametag that says Peggy and a tired smile
punctuated with a spasm of cracking gum, coming
to take our order with a torn pale green paper pad;
the usual, she says? And you betcha, we nod, using the stir stick to hold back
the ice in our glass as we drink, our eyes drifting back to the news, our backs
to the smokers huddled outside in the spitting snow.
Halfway North 