This is a new season
Too warm for autumn
too dry; the teardrops leave
a desert of salt on my cheeks
Too late for summer
runs in the park in shorts
The sun setting at 4:45
jars my internal clock, which proclaims
I'm overheating!  Something is wrong!

This season of fear.
of seeing things.
things I have seen only in the old movies
that showed the hatred still visible
during the civil rights era.
But they didn't end then.  They went underground.
Like the yawning mouth of the cenote
where the river flows back into the earth.

Pie de leon and cempasuche
flower here on Dia de los Muertos in this false season
But there is a time to live, and a time to die.
even the genie knows
bringing someone back from the dead
it's not pretty.

Today is backwards day! the children proclaim!
how else to explain that the cubs won
and we have woken up to news
that cannot exist
except now in this new unnatural space
between seasons.

The secret

We are chatting over coffee
in the warm safety of your living room
watching the snow land gentle outdoors
When I ask
"Do you remember 2016?
You were so sick
and Trump had just been elected
Grief was everywhere
It felt like the world was ending.
Could we have ever foreseen this talk?
Years later, our children grown?"