Amy Gordon
It’s Supposed to be Winter
Yellow crocuses spring up in fairy rings
around the maple tree. There is no snow.
The clouds are tantrumming over the Gulf.
We have walls to separate the sea from windowsills,
but yellow plastic toys float out of houses.
Strings of liberated ice push rivers into floods.
A sound like silver coins clinks along the banks.
Politicians are melting rapidly.
Dollar bills muddy the nesting grounds of geese.
A sound like gunshots wounds the earth.
At the top of the stairs, near the gleaming dome,
water rises. I hear a bird sing underwater.
When we see crocuses in January,
that’s when we know we are entering a new age.
Amy Gordon is the author of numerous books for young readers, including When JFK Was My Father (Houghton Mifflin, 1999) and Painting the Rainbow (Holiday House, 2014), both works of historical fiction haunted by helpful ghosts. Her poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Aurorean, Plum, Blue Nib, and in the anthology Poems in the Aftermath (Indolent Books, 2018).
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