by John Minczeski
"poetry makes nothing happen"
Some nights, like this one, something
thuds against the house, a tennis ball or branch
from the shrub below our bedroom window.
Poetry makes nothing happen.
I mean, we lie awake
as a bitter wind slashes at the house.
We have no need to shelter in a mosque or subway,
but still my heart aches. Poetry makes nothing
happen. It could be a deer
that got into fermented crabapples.
It could be a deer gnawing the shrub
below the window. Some windows
crack from the cold. Some explode.
Poetry makes nothing happen
and life goes on as if there’s no bounty
on our ordinary world. Remember when the oracle
said a great general would win the battle?
The moon continues its unhurried changes
as it has in the small forever of my life.
It makes nothing happen, poetry. Skin cracks
in the cold, like a tax on breathing.
Stepping inside to instant warmth
from the wind, we tell each other
what we already know about brutality
and winter. Once again poetry has made
nothing happen. People go on dying daily
John Minczeski is the author of A Letter to Serafin and other collections. Recent poems have appeared in Tampa Review, The New Yorker, Harvard Review, Cider Press Review, Bear Review, North Dakota Review, and elsewhere.