Today the snow is melting in the streets, lunar
gray lumps riddled with dogs’ piss and the pulp
of several weeks’ worth of trash—disintegrated
newspapers, take-out food containers pecked apart
by pigeons, losing lotto tickets, here and there a trampled
glove, its five fingers splayed beneath the dingy ice
like the farewell wave of a dying civilization.
We forget—or never knew—how many of us have come
and gone, and for how long, but spring is on its way again
making everything green and clean and new. . . .
Even in the city, sloshing through the noxious
leavings of our winter’s waste, we lift our faces
to the blue sky, catch the scent of lilacs blowing
in from somewhere—blowing, blowing one more time.