Everything looks new
this last week of spring rains:
lime-bright Swedish ivy;
ice plant, with its fat, light leaves.

I’m too tired to step
out of the car. All last night
wind worried the screen door,
banging it back and forth, and my dreams

were full of fearful calculations:
how long will the old furnace hold out,
and who will love me when I break?
You can’t eat

color; you can’t put it
in an envelope to the tax man, or the mechanic.
But it was there to greet us in the morning
when Makendra needed me

to drive her to work. We listened
to Nas rap on the radio
about future generations
and noticed how storms had washed the world clean

for a minute. A million
shades of green — chartreuse, forest,
mint — you could never
catalog them all, not if you spent a lifetime.

What a beautiful,
unfixable mess I’m in,
with little idea how to cross
this wide, wild water,

or whose rough hands will pull me over.