from POETRY
The optimists among us taking heart because it is spring skip along
attending their meetings signing their email petitions marching with their satiric signs singing their give peace a chance songs posting their rainbow twitters and blogs believing in a better world for no good reason I envy them said the old woman
The seasons go round they go round and around said the tulip
dancing among her friends in their brown bed in the sun in the April breeze under a maple canopy that was also dancing only with greater motions casting greater shadows and the grass hardly stirring
What a concerto
of good stinks said the dog
trotting along Riverside Drive
in the early spring afternoon
sniffing this way and that
how gratifying the violins of the river
the tubas of the traffic
the trombones
of the leafing elms with the legato of my rivals’ piss at their feet and the leftover meat and grease singing along in all the wastebaskets
Nominated by Marilyn Hacker, Joan Murray, Eleanor Wilner