Carnival in America

The pleasure of spring is its errancy.

The sun greets me at a winter vantage,

and I sweat through my sweater.

I say I want a little shock from the world,

though I hate to be surprised.

Out my window, the view is like a painting.

I take it in as I’d take a painting in—

Then I enter it. The day begins differently, again.

Men in their masks. Women in dresses

they wear only once. It was, I was

by a local told, a day to make the old season go.

The park fills, ritualistically, with children.

Under the elm, a woman near-disappears

under the brim of her yellow sun hat.

A sudden shift of light flashes

across her face at an angle that casts

her features in brutal sharpness.

It’s the guy from the movie! shouts a boy,

and he’s pointing at me.

But I’m not that guy. Close enough

to study me, his face hardens, then droops:

Sorry, that’s just nobody.

Winterberry blooms in spring each year.

For a case of quarters an amateur band

transacts the afternoon.

Everything’s in place. I’m cloud-watching,

if my hands were clouds, as actual clouds complicate

above me, threatening change.

A vague shape in the margin

of the view becomes clearer, stranger,

then someone I knew.

Then a clap of thunder erupts

in a day as clear as day—

Here the limits of my life, of the image

of my life, are neat sheared lines that mark

the edges of a field, man-made, made

again, again…

Oh, says the unexpecting heart, you’ve come back.

Just as I knew you would.