See how the past is not finished
here in the present
—WS Merwin
Dog, it is not a good time to run off leash.
There is an air of crises behind the wind.
Masked agents rip a former student from her children.
She disappears into phone calls from Guatemala.
The President dumps imaginary shit from a jet fighter
and calls it humor. Tonight,
there are more questions than answers.
We listen to the sirens beyond the rooftops,
behind the strip malls and blinking stop lights.
The oaks gasp in the change of seasons.
Some nights I imagine the leaves wailing
as they lose their grip and fall.
Al Ortolani, a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize, has been featured in the Writer’s Almanac, the American Life in Poetry, and Poetry Town. He’s a contributing editor to the Chiron Review. Recently, his poems have appeared in Rattle, The Midwest Quarterly, One Art, and the Pithead Chapel.
