Postscript to an Unsent Letter

Anyway, all that aside (aside, like those massive mounds 
of old snow plowed into piles on street corners, at dead ends)—
it is February. Hinting of change. Today the sun shed 
its gray, ragged-edged petticoats, light dances raw 
in the street again, windows flash back.
From tired fruitless branches impertinent finches 
inquire about the possibility of leaves. 
My neighbors are packing it in, shrugging off
the struggle, Atlas van curbed overnight
awaiting its load. They’re leaving to live 
someplace warm and easy. I’m sticking around. 
Because under icy crust, the snow is melting. 
Rivulets stream from beneath the cold dirtied heaps 
with impatience childlike, inviting, and when they merge,
they find they’re not fleeing, know they’re weaving 
together, rousing into routing, rivering into pooling,
rising toward renewal.

So, my friend, recognize:
all that mess I meandered through to get here? 
A prelude out of tune. The present 
only a fretful footnote to what will be.

 

Jeanne Julian is author of Like the O in Hope and two chapbooks. Her poems have won awards from Reed Magazine, Comstock Review, I-70 Review, and Naugatuck River Review. Her book reviews appear in Main Street Rag. She lives in Maine.