Love in Michigan

is a red-feathered breast
listening to the darkness,
a black, hand-fed squirrel
descending papery bark. Cotton drifts
piling up on windshields, ribbons of catkin snow
scurrying across the parking lots of bars,
where strangers drift in and out
listening to music they used to dance to
with people they barely know.
Flags fly at half-mast here
on all the right days and are taken in
at night and in storms
as all things that are loved should be.

Adrienne Lewis is the author of Coming Clean.

Poetry