Confusing Weather

The sun came to in late December.  Spring

Seemed just the thing that flattered into bloom

The murdered shrubs along the splintered fence.

The awnings sagged with puddles.  Roads were streams.

Wet leaves in sheets streaked everything with rust.

The man who raked his lawn transferred a toad

Too small to be a toad back to the woodpile.

In the countryside, he thought he spied the trust

That perished from his day to day relations.

His head was like a shoebox of old pictures,

Each showing in the background, by some fluke,

Its own catastrophe:  divorce, lost friends,

A son whose number he could not recall—

This weather, nothing but a second fall,

Ending, if somewhat late, just how fall ends.

Each day that week he sat outside awhile

And watched his shadow lengthen, disappear.

Then winter followed through its machinations,

Crept up and snapped the green head off the year.

Joshua Mehigan

© 1998; originally printed in Ploughshares.  Reprinted by
permission of the author.

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