Political Climate

The leftist
was all about summer,
enjoyed the humidity
and the heat.  It made the people
dissatisfied, reminded them of the cost
of air conditioning, unsafe city pools
made less safe by the absence of lifeguards
due to budget cuts, and the way the police
stared suspiciously at small knots
of young brown men on corners. 

The conservative looked forward
to winter.  The cold kept the people
close to home, the snow
piled up in dirty ridges
like border walls, the rough and narrow streets
made rougher and narrower, and everyone
eyeing their parking spaces in paranoia,
guarding their spots with rickety chairs,
boxes, and entitlement for having gone out
and dug them themselves.

A few always said:
Give me fall.  Give me
the riot in the trees, the flames
along the branches.  Give me the dying
and the sidewalks full of debris,
the sense of things failing before they can be
reborn. 

And the whole while the rest of us,
the unlabeled people,
thought all year round about spring
and its fertile mud, how early snaps
of warmth would bring hope of temperance,
how the green would hover unseen in the buds
and bulbs not yet awake, then
would in one day transform
the world when we weren’t looking
to something perfectly suited to our needs.

Somewhere, of course,
was an old woman who chattered incessantly
to herself about cycles
while sitting at her window as she had
for years

but no one wants to hear that,
whatever the weather…