Someone spills the deck under the table,
picks up almost every card, and the game goes on.
You couldn’t know you’d need that three of spades
to fill your straight an hour later. So it is
you can’t draw a line through
what you think is unimportant, and be left neatly
with a few days last February, the snow
almost gone, but the temperature still well
below normal (whatever that means now).
You can be left, though, with the sense that something
is passing daily, hourly, and you just dally
like an apple on a branch. You can be left with your wish
simply to be left alone: you will be,
one day, the house of your life finally quiet.
Pretend the house even now is that calm;
imagine the rain has ended and the porch is almost dry.
Like the dog that’s made his rounds about the room
and settled back in the spot from which he rose,
you seem to remember what you can’t let go of.
What you have always done you must do again.