February 27: A Quick Poem, Linda Nemec Foster, "Late Winter"

This is going to be a quick post to give you a quick poem by Linda Nemec Foster.

In fact, this post is going to be so quick, it's already over.

Saint Marty's going to go work on a poem of his own now.

Late Winter

by:  Linda Nemec Foster

The tired snow worn-out by city dirt
hardens into gray rock.  The road crews
are out, cleaning the grass and sewers
of the debris left-over from autumn,
the recent past that no one remembers:
crisp brown leaves now turned limp and black;
a torn, red glove; newspaper headlines
whose intensity is muted by the season's amnesia.

The men clean in silence, only the radio
from their pick-up truck blares the lament
of Bonnie Raitt's love letter.  What they dredge up
is left behind for another crew to haul away.
As if they're allowing us one small moment
to see what runs in the drak veins
of our streets, what forgotten half-lives
sleep content under our houses while we
turn restlessly from one dream to the next.