I held my breath
waiting for spring: the rising undercurrent
of melted snow taking the street
by storm, & the sun no longer
someone’s idea of a joke but something
capable of bringing down the palace
of ice the cold had raised by working night
& day for what had seemed
an eternity. Meanwhile, people said
I had my whole life ahead of me,
& I believed them. Early
mornings my mother whispered in my car
to wake up, I stumbled through the motions
of preparing myself
for school & heard her busy in the kitchen.
As if still dreaming, I’d sit
down then as now
to my half of a pink grapefruit
dusted with sugar, which gave it the kind
of rosy glow the snow took on
once the mahogany dark outside
had gone up in smoke & before the sallow
light of day broke
the gloom like the headlights
of the black-numbered pumpkin school bus
lumbering down the road to stop for me,
its brakes squeaking the way, at every step,
the frozen ground would creak
like the hall floor at home
under the ugly, buckled-up
black galoshes I couldn’t wait
to deposit in the cloakroom,
my last name neatly printed in blue ink
on a tiny white adhesive strip
inside each one. I lived
for the future so long the present got
to be a dream, a dress
rehearsal for a play not meant to be
performed, & only tomorrow
was real. In time I wrote
off today & imagined myself living
in the world to come. Just as I always kept
my Johnny Pesky fielder’s glove
well lubricated with Neet’s Foot
Oil all winter, I nursed my desire for spring
& learned to lay up treasure, in my words,
against a day I had no hope of seeing.
Kingdom Come
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