Sparkle

By Joseph Hesch

When the wires shed their ice skins,

between midnight and dawn,

it was as if Nature knew

her pretty party was through.

She dropped the gelid husks,

now turned to jewels in the scatter

of headlights and the barroom's neon glare.

Or maybe she just tossed her

empty Corona bottles from on high.


I'm pretty sure we're getting close to the end of rough winter just about everywhere in the US. Up here in the Northeast we've had as much snow and cold as I can remember since I was a youngster (during the Ice Age, you know).  But I believe it's almost over because we're getting more sleet and freezing rain of the type that makes tree limbs and powerlines sag like teenagers' jeans. Once that ice breaks, we get buoyed by those hopes for rainy old April and the green of spring. Wait, did you just hear that crack? I choose to think it wasn't the ice on the Hudson or Mohawk breaking up. I'll make believe it's the sound of a baseball meeting a wooden bat. I remember those, too.