Nothing Doing

Stub of December, the year in a fast fade.

Christmas trees dragged stump-first to the curb,

clumps of wrinkled tinsel the only glitter.

All else-grass, sky -dead yellow,

all else wan and resigned, the black, burnt out

wick of the year too weak to raise a flame.

Everything looking a little late and left behind:

power line slumped and swinging in a stiff breeze,

wheelchair abandoned beneath the off-ramp,

two-by-four moldering in a ditch, its single

bent nail like a rusty finger bone.

Grackle perched on a mailbox, staring

at nothing. He's right to take a hard look.

I always miss it, too: the turn, the wheeze

of one year becoming the whispered

intimation of a new one, the world's furniture

suddenly in a new room without moving.

It's now, with strict attention, one might

detect the mechanism: the webbed intricacy

of the grackle's brain, the planets stirring up

their circles of dust. Perhaps it's now we're nearest

to something that could save us-something

beyond our knowledge and our will to believe it.

The day is stark, hushed, ground down

to particulars, as if encrypted.

Time to watch for a sign, a shift. When