by Mark Fischweicher
This morning all the trees got old.
Fuzzy stubble on their leafless crowns.
Snow-flakey,
dusty, and already bald, as if
the slightest wind
could end
it all.
The sky, an equal grey.
Gulls, cut from the same,
the river, too.
The train,
the steel of the bridge,
the water, all a leaden,
somber, dingy, dreary hue.
The current on its schedule, though,
still moves beneath and through.
It makes you yawn, it does
No need to be involved.
It’s hard to tell the living from the dead
along the banks;
I shudder at the stillness,
try not to think of sorrow
in winds to come
so brittle, soft, and bare.
No time to lie dormant here,
Mark Fischweicher has been scratching out poems since junior high school and still hopes it may become a regular thing.