by Lynne Thompson
This has nothing to do with a plague
or with the earth melting around us.
This is no time to dream of winter.
She is brazen. She is a prophet we have
too long ignored. The rain—a welcome
distraction, usually—is full with acidity
and plastic and cohabits with a flaming
in the valleys, over Angeles Crest; claims
coyotes and raccoons. This season brooks
no forgiveness. If you think a compass
will lead you back to your children, think
again. They sit in the audience now, they
caress stones, eat the last shriveled orange
and pray there will be an epilogue, that
their lives will not become minor, remnant.
Lynne Thompson was Los Angeles’ 2021-22 Poet Laureate and a Poet Laureate Fellow of
the Academy of American Poets. She is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Fretwork, winner of the 2019 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize, and of the forthcoming Blue on a Blue Palette that will be published by BOA Editions in Spring 2024. Her recent work can be found or is forthcoming in Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, Massachusetts Review, and the anthology In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy. Thompson sits on the Boards of the Los Angeles Review of Books, Cave Canem, and The Poetry Foundation.