Winter fight

Despite the way the heft of them resists
everyday winds 

every tree is susceptible to lightning,
every rooftop to weight  

of snow.
All these radio  

lyrics make sense now—
the ones about  

love being a bitch, and hearts
obliterated, scarred 

and all those wet pillows and bottles
of whiskey. As if all along  

they had been yodeling
in foreign tongues and something  

gave way inside me,
quit resisting 

commonplace awfulness,
realigning with a gasp,  

and I understand.
Earthquakes can  

split Ohio, even, and frozen
pipes can burst before you know they froze.

Listening to the University Symphony’s Spring Concert

I acknowledge how little I know.
Which is piccolo  

which flute? Viola or violin?
Gooseflesh decides that awestruck ignorance  

will be ok. Bows slink
through a Teleman sonata and an old lady crinkles  

her purse for a lozenge. Years ago I envied
a life like Frasier on tv— 

critiquing opera over Armagnac. Bartok
blasts follicles, wood-block  

clonking horse hoofs
clop off cinderblock  

walls. There’s just too much here to know,
my skull too filled with Seinfeld quotes  

and Beatles lyrics, too crowded with
childhood Easter memories and grocery lists  

and household lists—we want, we need,
we owe. Music seeps  

in like outside’s April humidity
and has to just be— 

like a songbird’s call I can’t identify, like a
scent that’s either narcissus or magnolia, 

like the lingering burn in a soup that’s maybe be ancho
or cayenne. It’s ok not to know.