Bob Hicok

LOVELY WEATHER WHETHER IT SHOULD BE OR NOT

It's February and I've opened every window,
an orgy of warm air, crow sass and river song
fills the house. Daffodils have flourished
since Valentine's Day where our three dead cats
are buried, an island of yellow in a green yard
on top of bones and a towel for each cat.
Forsythia are already loitering all around town.
For the first time I can recall, I didn't shovel snow
once this winter. All politics, nudism, and climate change
are local. There are a hundred pounds of oranges
on the counter because whenever I see oranges
in the store, I buy them without thinking, like bandages,
French novels, parachutes. If oranges
tasted like the oil required to grow and ship them,
I wouldn't buy them, but they taste like a second chance,
like sugar and fire having sex. Oil tastes like flying
to Amsterdam or ordering toilet paper from Amazon,
like almost everything I own or touch.
I wish I believed in heaven, or that heaven
believed in me, but as far as a life in the clouds,
this is it. There is no afterlife, only life.            

BOB HICOK is the author of the forthcoming collection Breathe (Copper Canyon Press, 2026).