The One To Come

April, and a sudden cold turn,
grey as the underworld. You can almost see
the river Styx in the ocean, a place to cross
to an unknown destination. Darkness
when you expected spring, your whole sense
of seasons once again out of kilter
and there is nothing to do but ride it out.
determined demigod out of his depth,
every battle once one, lost in a morning,
in cold rain, it a single grey day,
Weather and moods are as fickle as spring in Vermont,
nothing, darkness or brightness, feels permanent,
subject, all of them, to chemistry and the rising sap,
to the vagaries of Aeolus.
Never mind that no one has heard of him
or his time is gone. He is still fey, fickle
and you have never known, since your Bulfinches childhood,
whether he was angry or gay. Or if you can even
use that word in the old sense. But you do anyway,
sure somewhere someone will understand,
and the rest will become puzzled or angry.
So today, you will walk the stormy beaches.
You will wait for sunshine. You are too tired
to make it yourself, content to trust
the seasons. The one now.
The one to come.

About this poem.

For those not raised on Bulfinches’ Mythology, Aeolus was the Greek God of wind. The River Styx was the river you crossed to the underworld.

The picture was taken in Kennebunkport, Maine.

Tom