Out there in the world,
Some brittle oak leaves
Have survived the worst of it.
They cling, like the rest of us,
Beset and shivering on
Threads in March’s wind.

The sun barely changes,
Traipsing as it does, from
South to north and
Then to south again.
And the blueness of the sky?
Well, what has not already
Been well said about that?

I am listening
To the punk squelching
Of Patti Smith, wriggling
In her tender agonies,
On a filthy stage on
The Bowery thirty-four
Long years ago.

The heat has kicked on, and
A manufactured comfort
Swirls up from the registers.
It is not the wind moving
Outside that I think I hear.

In the slick pages of