In these chill and dormant months,
pleasure is tucked away, and wonder
brews and thrums invisible,
unannounced beneath winter’s cloak.
I do not walk as much as I would
Like, or as I did in the fall, when
the weather was fair, the rewards
of summer still brilliant, ablaze.
In the bare space of the new
year, I pull my woolen coat on,
step outside and down the street.
The clouds sit heavy over Manhattan
across the river, the air held still.
And in the park, where asters bloom
in late summer and bees suck
the September nectar doing
their quiet buzzing work with ease
and without distraction, pulling pollen
so that the rain garden might seed
and flower next year,
I see the devastation—
the swath of native garden
cut clear and naked by city workers
who cannot see emergent spring
pulsing within crisp seed pods
or under browned and fallen leaves.
Gone. All gone.
Scythed and uprooted, the frail
bedraggled refuse tossed in piles,
springtime’s promise was bagged
and hauled off as so much trash,
leaving us to ask when we might ever
have patience or wisdom enough
to remove our heavy hands and let
wonder bloom in time, in spite of us.
_
Ann E. Wallace is Poet Laureate of Jersey City, New Jersey and host of The WildStory: A Podcast of Poetry and Plants. Her second poetry collection, Days of Grace and Silence: A Chronicle of COVID’s Long Haul, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2024. She is author of Counting by Sevens (Main Street Rag) and has published work in Halfway Down the Stairs, Gyroscope Review, Wordgathering, and other journals. You can follow her online at AnnWallacePhD.com and on Instagram @annwallace409.
© 2023, Ann E. Wallace
Halfway Down the Stairs 