Uprisings Poem by Morgan Michaels

Up slides the blind and out of remotest heaven
from a perlmutter sky
falls the pure, the Brownian, upward drifting snow
casually but surely, in high-blown whorls;
on the rail has settled a bluish inch.
'It's cold', croaks the bird, on yellow, thin legs,

so I rise. Snow fills last years rifts and sifts
on sticks and galls and nodes of last years'
pride, the dormant window boxes;
Outside you can almost hear it breathe;
It seethes, that bush
that stays green all the winter.

A day. To pass. A day to pass
till sleeping time, again, and blinded once more,
to sleep between footboard and bedstead; only snow-
penniless, homeless, less all
those things that fellow in the Citroen specified needing
hurtling down-Rhine, years ago, breeding

melancholy accumulations
detestable, sweet,
difficult to translate: There is nothing to do but go on
Chaos death is, one hears, and, frankly I'm not ready.
So many winters in one guesses it's all good: the season, the falling snow, the sleep.