We're at the beginning of April, 2016. Its "almost" time; almost starting to get warm, almost time to nominate new people for president, but winter may not be over. There's a cold spell forecast for tonight in the New York area, and the electoral process may wind up with a freeze on new and better ideas about our inequalities, our diversity, our climate.
So, I wrote a piece called April.
April
Central park in almost bloom
trees winter naked start to dress for summer.
Clouds of red and dark green husks
pop from skinny branch tips stretched and filigreed.
No trace of them last week.
Winter mocked us.
Now red and dark green clouds show off their defiance.
Yes, there will be spring
maybe tomorrow when the trees explode
yellow wisps of leaves unfold
breathe like pupae in the new warmth
and we come out to watch, stretch and yearn
to drop our winter layers
like the red and dark green husks.
But we are wary, not defiant
to expose our skins and hopes
into the springtime air
and to each other.
We should go out, burst out
smell the other people
curious like puppies
beneath the sky.
But now the sky’s depleted
a tattered garment worn so thin
a sieve for radiation
from a vast, indifferent cosmos.
We need to cover up, put on sunblock
if we go outside, breathe in deep
the new warm moistness.
We do go out
sniff around our rediscovered peers
maybe even touch a few
but now behind the touches
we are wary ever more
caught up and exposed
a naked, crowded world
moves so fast
we miss the past
when March and April only meant
there would be May and June and summer.