Aubade Poem by Tom Goff

All dawns begin gray. Clouded,
clear, they all start like this one,
God unsure how he wants the day
till the light brushes his leg

then plumps down on the horizon
hard, daysleeping like a fed animal.
Today, my mind finally dried,
filling with sharp-scented
geraniums. We rose together

from clean sheets, able at last
to shrug out of our coats of rain.
The water had beaded on our
arm hairs for years, left patterns
that beetled and crawled like bad
wallpaper. The great spinning

moodwheel skidded by angry
and stuck teetering on placid
as we plonked down butter dishes,
jam jars, and still smoking plates
of toast. We just knew the old

water was walking back up
the drainpipes. The window blinds
lifted themselves, and we ate
before our neighbors with the raw
pride of new wealth. Change
evidenced itself, not in the grass,

but in the cracked ground deluge
had strained, now dry as the headlines
we read. Liquidambar bequeathed us
its maced seedballs; and our lawn,
the tracks from what only looked like
the footprints of neighborhood kids.