Nobody’s Bored

Because, shit, it’s too dry to snow but it’s cold
and the crocus is cold under the wind, wind
the cat contemplates through the screen, geese out
on the river now terrorized by swans . . . But nobody’s

bored with this; it’s elegant just being alive in an age
of advertising, not seeing any ads but this weather.
There’s wind on other planets, it’s somehow
interesting to know, and a broken shed latch

swings hard against the plywood door. This brings me
to radio, the little half-lit awarenesses fluttering
inside of each morning, the cat and the cricket she eats,
the man and the woman he needs—one soft

and wholly graspable in front of the other—
until there’s just sky and song in the distance,
no clouds present for breakfast either, just two herons
out near some cattails. You know what I mean?

David Dodd Lee has published eight collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Animalities (Four Way Books, 2014). His poems have recently appeared in Guernica, Field, Gulf Coast, Blackbird, and The Nation, among other journals. Lee teaches creative writing, visual art, and literature at Indiana University South Bend, where he also serves as editor-in-chief of the university’s 42 Miles Press.