They think you came first from Japan
\nin packing crates
\nhoping for mulberries, figs and persimmons,<\/p>\n
for time to vibrate to one another
\ncome mating season,
\none signal longer and lower than any other,<\/p>\n
for good sidings and soffits to wander
\nall winter,
\nwhere you\u2019d never let loose the stink of coriander.<\/p>\n
First you tried Pennsylvania, then south to Florida
\nand north to Maine:
\nyou hitched your rides across America.<\/p>\n
Dodged jumping spiders and katydids
\nwith eyes for your eggs,
\nmet crickets, ground beetles and earwigs<\/p>\n
keen to make you dinner. Learned to prosper
\non lima beans,
\nsoya beans, peaches and peppers. <\/p>\n
One fall my sister came and erected
\na blank sheet
\non our deck overnight, a light behind it<\/p>\n
to gather bugs. Who was she searching for?
\nNot you, hibernating
\nin here with us as though here was where<\/p>\n
you\u2019d been headed for. Until the day
\nwe turned up the heat,
\nmaking you crazy, blowing your cover. <\/p>\n
If you were me, you went out still dreaming
\nof the words you\u2019d heard
\nalong the road but never hitched to meaning: <\/p>\n
Asian pear and flowering dogwood,
\ncorn and cherry and apricot tree.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
On such a morning you\u2019d charge out to marvel
\nat arse-deep spilth and a still air charred
\nwith cold, the blank after the blizzard,<\/p>\n
a scene as familiar as summer\u2019s burden
\nof heat, when my hair frizzed and mosquito burrs
\nswole up my feet like homebaked dinner rolls<\/p>\n
and our southern friends taught us to lay
\nback, saunter slow, go easy,
\nwant the sweat, do nothing like crazy,<\/p>\n
but this snow day was different: Mayor Pete
\non the radio insisting the whole city stay put,
\nso much for poetry and for prose the neat<\/p>\n
roulette curves of frost on our windows, the margins
\nof the house too frigid for bare feet, our snit
\nwith the world alone staying warm, staying simple;<\/p>\n
on such a morning when it dawns we\u2019ve failed
\nto stockpile enough food for a trio of snow days,
\nlet alone beer, let alone prepped ourselves to stave<\/p>\n
off starving Hoosiers in whatever end-times emerge
\nthis century, which might be all about weather
\nor all about those who go forth while we slugabout here, <\/p>\n
news is an Elkhart man has perished of leaving home,
\nheart-stopped by cold; and even after the snow,
\nthere is this distance between us and other people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stink They think you came first from Japan in packing crates hoping for mulberries, figs and persimmons, for time to vibrate to one another come mating season, one signal longer and lower than any other, for good sidings and soffits to wander all winter, where you\u2019d never let loose the stink of coriander. First you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":229,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[346,349],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n