by Alan Walowitz
It’s late here, afternoon, and for all I know
the solstice might have come and gone.
Another of these sodden days
keeps me in my sleep-clothes—Gatkes,
my mother might say, a little Yiddish
meant to make things light
and shame me into the fray we’ve made
of forced boredom and too much sleep.
Not much happening before Christmas,
the true-believers at the mall, avoiding one another
as if they want to remain alive.
Still, here they are in droves
to address our national debt
and resuscitate mankind’s collective desire;
the National Guard poised to calm the streets
so I won’t have to worry the neighbor’s rage:
my leaves blown carelessly on his lawn again;
the cops have promised not to kill anymore.
Why not walk aimlessly around
masked and dazed by the beauty of the Christmas lights?
Underutilized, my own daughter says of me,
though it’s not how I was raised.
The moon was part of us once
before it was hoisted and fastened above
and later assigned to werewolves and love--
though we know we’re done with that.
But now the moon, risen low in the sky,
and twice as bright comes into its own --
holding out against any wobble,
any sudden tilt of the earth.
The Sun, that old Palooka,
means to cook us alive and swallow us whole.
Still, the moon remains, attached to the tides,
and even in times like these,
determined to do its little job,
whether or not it’s to any avail.
Meanwhile, let's not forget to attend to ours.
Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry. His chapbook Exactly Like Love comes from Osedax Press. The full-length The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems is available from Truth Serum Press. Most recently, from Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night written with poet Betsy Mars.
