like rivers

today it’s sunny for the first time

in five days, so I claw the mist

out of my eyes and haul myself

onto the highest ledge on campus.

There’s an admitted student event

and high schoolers everywhere,

balloons strung up between the trees,

which have begun to flower.

I could be anything in this moment

except for miserable. Not like this.

Not with the blue sky preening

under the touch of a thousand bleary-eyed

college students and winter stumbling,

drunk, out the back door. Winter? We forget

about her. We put her away with the down

jackets and the beanies. We take out

the Adirondack chairs, whose name I still

cannot pronounce. We eat lunch outside.

Years pass like rivers. And still, all it takes

is a streak of sunshine on the far wall

for me to look up, abruptly,

in wonder. What can I say? I am simpler

than I imagined myself to be.

I am not immune to the motions

of the stars.