Spending Spring Festival Alone

I wake to dark low buffeting pressing my ears, bustling gusts and moans of the wind at my window. Grey noise of air purifiers I barely notice. A clock’s fidget wheels tickle the edges of my brain.

Running the sodden boardwalk, my feet

Are drumming the bright allegretto of un-presupposing Mozart.

Sunlight in my ears on a rainy morning.

The surprising softness of the old cat’s fur surprisingly gaunt body underneath a comforting fluff vibrating purrs a contented sigh as he nuzzles my hand my book wet nose cold and vulnerable the smooth rough paper invisible weave under my fingertips like the sensuous touch of skin at the end of summer

III

The room is sick with his scent,

I can taste it long after I’ve left.

The crab soup that exploded from my dumpling

Will haunt my notes on the Italian past subjunctive

For the rest of this notebook’s fragrant days,

Like a ghost of today, when today is a memory.

(Snowy and full of cats.)

In the jewelled morning after the rain,
The trees are posing jauntily for happy selfies,

Arms outstretched,
Like the tender, awkward jollity of family Christmas.

I orbit the lake and fake it for class

And feel white in my poetry, yellow in my white

And light in the darkening heart.