poem -- last day in June

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LAST DAY OF JUNE

I sleep late, get up

and fix a cup of coffee—

dark roast French we bought

at Trader Joe’s.

Pedro will not paint the bathroom

ceiling today as expected, my wife tells me.

It will be in the 90s again today.

Ninety is normal now.

Cup of coffee in one hand,

book of poetry in the other,

I sit down to read.

It’s a good day to read poems

about snow.

I turn to “The Snowstorm” by

                        Ralph Waldo Emerson.

            …the whited air

            …the frolic architecture of the snow

Then I turn to “Snow-Flakes” by

                        Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

            …Silent, and soft, and slow

               Descends the snow

            …The troubled sky reveals

               The grief it feels.

Then to a contemporary—Joseph Stroud,

who divides his time between Santa Cruz

and a cabin in the Sierra Nevadas.

His poem is called “Manna.”

                                    …whatever

     blessing each flake of snow is the hint of, I am

     grateful…

                        …I hold out my arms,

     palms up, I know it is impossible to hold

     for long what we love of the world…

Another searing day in Birmingham,

but my Southern soul is cool and bluesy,

prepared to face the fey day.

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