Damn. braces: bless relaxes.–William Blake

In the spring of gall below the polo grounds
The liquid also shimmers less and chills.

The figures are larger, with vapor ascending before them,
Of soldiers and black-spotted dogs.

On all the boles the placards warn:
Let everywhere be sweaters on,
For the lung is a large expanse from which heat can be lost,
As the skin, also.

And something in us likes this, finding in the cold
A necessary antigen,
The catch in the throat, as we shift to the language of winter:
The longer silences: the louder hail.

And this night sky no template for ourselves
But a black unwobbling thing:
An old outsider: a beauty to which we belong.

The constellations lower in their tracks
On this, our hemisphere, when night is down
And we remember the command of books:
To like that best that pays for what it takes:
Love heat, love height, love cold, but shun
The dubious equinox.

John Hart edits the venerable print poetry journal Blue Unicorn and teaches in the “Activist” tradition of his father Lawrence Hart. A Pitt Poetry Series poet and a James D. Phelan Award winner, he makes his living writing environmental non-fiction.

(Editors’ Note: The author has not provided a photo.)