This poem is from an observance of watching children from day to day and how the seasons play a role in their behavior. I believe the seasons have voices and stir the changes in one’s soul. Watching children throughout the year provide lenses for me to view not only the reactions that have offered inspiration but to experience life through their eyes.
Hidden inside the groping,
fingers of fall, besides,
the old Pinewood apartments
we stand to wait for the yellow bus.
All year their excited voices rise and fall
like the changing leaves.
But here, they are quieted and still.
On the cusp of winter, cold air
penetrates like piercing ice sickles
in a foot thick of snow.
I insert my hands to the warmth
—Melting shivers, to the prickle of the wind,
and thankful for how peaceful they are,
capable of silence. Sometimes
I think there is another place where life,
cannot change us.
Each day we inhale and stop as the
yellow bus rumbles and grinds itself
along with pavement.
The sun crawls from tree to tree and dances across,
the frosty green slivers.
The earth spins in the grinding pavement.