The Last Hour Of Winter Poem by Michael McGriff

This winter's carnival of rain
tears down and moves east
for the hills.
No more working wet
or boots by the wood stove.
No more sweating booze
in your rain gear
or fouled chains stripping the cogs.
He sits at his bacon and coffee
like a man at a piano.
His hands begin to work,
he becomes invisible,
the coast wind chases the tide
and passes through him.
The jetty, the seagulls,
the broken piers moaning
on their barnacle stilts.
He is tired of the gray world
that says a man can't leave
his body unless he leaves it
for good, so, like Chagall's rabbi
he floats out of himself
through the kitchen window
to the old coast highway
where the sandstone banks
lie etched with names and swastikas,
arrows and desperate propositions.
He sees fields seed farmers will burn
where Mennonite country
skirts paper mills
and roadside nurseries,
sees himself in bend of water
filled with junked cars
where the river eddies
then changes direction,
the old water riding
from one season to the next
through the skeletons
of bucket seats.
There's a tear in the world
where he places the name
he's called himself all winter,
then re-enters his life.