by Jill J. Lange
I don't need to tell you
about this winter's cold
or about the stock market
falling steadily as the snow
and freezing rain.
Anyone who listens
to the news or reads a paper,
assuming you can find one,
knows
and lives
this depression.
Tell me how you are counting
the cards you are dealt.
Where have you put your money?
Have you found a guru,
gone back to your therapist,
renewed your prescription for Valium?
Do you live in California where
medical marijuana is an option?
Do you want to know my cure?
I'm counting robins.
The sun came out last week,
I spotted two robins under the maple
with the snowdrops,
and further down the road
another scratching grass,
then two more.
I'm up to twenty-one, no thirty now.
You can trust a universe
that creates robins.
Jill J. Lange is an attorney and poet whose writing reflects her passion for the natural world and her interest in political and environmental causes. Her poems have appeared in The New Verse News previously.