It's the day before midnight
where I sit collecting evidence
of vanished springtimes,
of Aprils long past:
shells, shards, ships,
psalter of strange voyage.

Soda-crackers of an eremite,
box-tops, green stamps, bottle-caps,
World's Fair bookmarks from 1939,
dimestore postcards of La Scala Santa.

*

Cutpurse sonnets,
three for a buck ninety-nine
at the refugees' flea-market.

Bulletin from Belchertown:
dead-heads have havoc'd
the Malbec pioneers
of a corporate Yuletide.

Starveling, December
stutter-steps onto the catwalk
coiffured à la garçonne.

*

Over cups of mud at The Sunny Side,
codgers bicker and cuss.
"You have a fresh mouth, chief:
who died and made you Elvis?"

I leave these testy widowers
and lummox forth into a gust
of winter at her stiffest.

This wind is arctic, Emersonian,
subjunctive and sassy.

I go sowing frost-seeds
in the family snowgarden,
half-past-six o'clock shadow
on my larkish chin.