Winter Shifts to Spring: A Poem to Celebrate (or Mourn)

Over the past few weeks, I've noticed the light changing. I get out of evening exercise class, and it's only dusk, not night. In fact, last week it was still light, though just barely.


I suspect this week, with the time change to Daylight Savings Time, will feel radically different.

Or maybe it won't. Maybe you're saying, "I get to an office before the sun comes up, and I leave well after sunset."

So, no matter how you're experiencing this shift in seasons, here's a poem, which appeared in my second chapbook, I Stand Here Shredding Documents:



Slant of Seasons


Now she knows the seasons only by the slant
of light against her windshield.
Her car protects her from the extremes
of climate--hot or cold outside, it's the same
seventy-eight degrees as she sinks
into the luxurious leather seat
waiting for the traffic to crawl forward.

She thinks of her ancestors' farms, row
after row of rich dirt furrowed
to keep a family fed. She wonders
about the land below the pavement,
land that lies fallow to allow commuters
the fast route to the office.

She looks across the lanes of cars,
row after row of metal husks,
pod after pod with precisely one person
per car, lying fertile,
waiting to blossom in the workplace.