In these chill and dormant months,
pleasure is tucked away, and wonder
brews and thrums invisible,
unannounced beneath winter’s cloak.
I do not walk as much as I would
like, or as I did in the fall, when
the weather was fair, the rewards
of summer still brilliant, ablaze.
In the bare space of the new
year, I pull on my woolen coat,
step outside and down the street.
Clouds sit heavy over Manhattan
across the river, the air held still.
And in the park, where asters bloom
in late summer and bees suck
the September nectar doing
their quiet buzzing work with ease
and without distraction, pulling pollen
so the rain garden will seed
and flower next year,
I see the devastation—
a swath of native garden
cut clear and naked by city workers
who could not see emergent spring
pulsing within crisp seed pods
or under browned and fallen leaves.
Gone. All gone.
Scythed and uprooted, the frail
bedraggled refuse tossed into piles,
springtime’s promise bagged
and hauled off as so much trash,
leaving us to ask when we might ever
have patience or wisdom enough
to step away and let wonder bloom
in time, in spite of us.
This poem first appeared in Halfway Down the Stairs (2023).
—
Ann E. Wallace is 2023-24 Poet Laureate of Jersey City, NJ and host and producer of The WildStory: A Podcast of Poetry and Plants for the Native Plant Society of New Jersey. She is the author of Days of Grace and Silence: A Chronicle of COVID’s Long Haul (Kelsay Books) and Counting by Sevens (Main Street Rag). Her work is online at AnnWallacePhD.com and on Instagram @annwallace409.
