Alice Friman, "How It Is"

Late October
and the pitiless drift
begins in earnest. And all
that whispered in the pockets
of summer's green uniform
is shaken out and dumped.

My mimosa knew, for wasn't
that death fingering the leaves
all summer? Yet the tree
plumped its pods, spending
all July squeezing them out,
going about its business, as did
the slash pine and loblolly,
spraying pollen—coating
windows, cars, filling every
idle slit with sperm.

What does life mean
but itself? Ask the sea.
You'll get a wet slap back-
handed across your mouth.
Ask the tiger. I dare you.

And your life, with its
tedium of suffering, what
does it mean but what it is?
And mine—balancing
checkbooks and whomping up
a mess of vittles as my son
used to say. My son, the funny one,
the always-hungry-for-supper-
and-the-happy-ending-
I-was-never-able-to-give-him one.

Who am I to write the user's manual
for a life, except to say,
Look at trees, dug in and defiant.
Be like the river. Stick out your tongue.

Why not? What's to lose
when what's to lose is everything?

Alice Friman

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