Your life’s a better poem than any that
you’ll ever write. I feel that I should end
with this, but think that it’s been said before.
And now the snow (perhaps the season’s last)
is swirling, and the coffee’s working fast,
with Mahler’s Second, playing now, to rend
then mend my pent emotions; soothe, combat
the ambiguities that pack the core
of my identity. It’s sour-sweet:
catharsis, death-and-resurrection. We
all know this well, but I am every time
enthralled by it. The music stops. My street
is buried quietly. My reverie
will linger longer than this cobbled rhyme.

—

Thomas Zimmerman teaches English and directs the Writing Center at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, MI. His chapbook In Stereo was published by The Camel Saloon Books on Blog in 2012.