April 18, 2011
It is snowing in southwest Michigan.
Such weather is unusual so late.
The trees are squirting buds that advocate
For green profusions that yesterday began
To grunt and poke and strain toward full-blown spring.
Now fleeced, the trees are January stark.
Though clocks, sprung forward, hedge against the dark,
We hear the arias our miseries sing
When darkness is a slave to all that white.
If global warming is the fangs of doom
I see its poison wafting, from this room.
The future will be mottled if not bright.
Perhaps I’ll die before the killing trend.
I hear my children’s voices on this wind.
Copyright Credit: Richard Katrovas, "April 18th, 2011" from Swastika into Lotus. Copyright © 2016 by Richard Katrovas. Reprinted by permission of Carnegie Mellon University Press.
Source: Swastika into Lotus (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2016)