April

The optimists among us taking heart because it is spring skip along attending their meetings signing their e-mail petitions marching with their satiric signs singing their we shall overcome songs posting their pungent twitters and blogs believing in a better world for no good reason I envy them said the old woman The seasons go round they go round and around said the tulip dancing among her friends in their brown bed in the sun in the April breeze under a maple canopy that was also dancing only with greater motions casting greater shadows and the grass hardly stirring What a concerto of good stinks said the dog trotting along Riverside Drive in the early spring afternoon sniffing this way and that how gratifying the cellos of the river the tubas of the traffic the trombones of the leafing elms with the legato of my rivals’ piss at their feet and the leftover meat and grease singing along in all the wastebaskets