The chill of Spring has made us strangers.
The sky, in opaque blues, hides last month’s
winds. Children wander, unattentive —
shellshocked drifters, shivering down the pavement.
Warm days, for worse and better, bring us
all crowding onto freeways, open streets.
We meet and reconcile or draw, in dust,
lines of personal apartheid.
But here we are far enough above
the earth, that mortal concerns are
nothing to us, encased as we are
in March winds, under blue skies.
A warmer climate might see the emergence
of nemeses, Nemean lions of personal tyrants,
that warm blooded limbs might wrestle
and send returning.
But here the only struggles are crows
for meat, or the stretching of a stock
of liquor to last the coldest days.
Stragglers and hunters, prowling the drive,
with ragged wolves in tow.
Here there is peace between all mankind.
And neither is there love.