Seasons of Hope

It is definitely an Outdoor Poetry Season kind of day here in Brookland, my cozy neighborhood in Northeast DC, where Pope Francis will arrive one day next week to say or dance (or whatever, pantomime?) a mass at the Basilica about a mile up the street. But he’s not here yet, and I cannot even dimly sense his pending presence. We are moving slowly, but with something like purpose.

I sat down under a tree to write. And wrote a poem and moved on. Now, I’m on the roofed deck built up against the side of our house, listening to Natalie Merchant while I type. Her voice disrupts nothing, seems to deepen the peace. I’m drinking a lambic—a rather unstraightforward sort of raspberry beer—from a small mason jar. It feels almost like today is another birthday and (like old Eben Flood) I’m celebrating in the middle of my crowded all-alone.

This is the poem I wrote earlier:

Whoever

is coloring this day

started in the a.m. with autumn

but has since veered to the moist heat of summer.

Fine

by me, I was gonna sit here in the shade

by the Brookland Metro regardless and wait for the next

surprise to come round the corner where two streets meet square.

It won’t be the Pope

when it comes about

as surprising as yesterday

Wait—that’s tomorrow—but when it comes

I’m expecting a beautiful surprise

with spring in her step

bouquet in her hand

and me on her mind.