Between Storms by Alison Luterman

Between Storms

Last night it rained Biblical torrents,
and the trees dropped all their leaves at once.

Today, red and orange leaves, like little hands,
lie all over the sidewalks in mounds. Their cellulose skin

so much like ours but without meat or bones.
Meanwhile the neighbors are out in force,

raking and binning the storm’s detritus.
It’s what we humans do, after a tempest;

we clean up what’s left, while dogs prance
through swept piles, and the general

mayhem we call living spangles the air.
This almost-past year was a long skid, no brakes,

on the kind of ICE that hardens around the heart
of a nation. There are neighbors who aren’t here

but should be, and so much has been destroyed
that can never be put right again, at least not

in this brief lifetime. Where’s the bottom and how
will we know when we’ve reached it

is the question not even the black-clad astrologer
can answer, but I do know my friends are down

at Home Despot as I speak, clanging pots and pans
and fighting the kidnappers who come for the men

who only want work, and others
blocked the intersections around ICE offices

in San Francisco just last week and got arrested.
I’m braced–we all are–for whatever comes next,

for the wheels to come completely off the bus.
Meanwhile we’re between storms and the air is soft,

the neighbors have an improbable inflated Santa still
presiding over their yard, plastic reindeer flapping in the wind,

and fake snow, with a big ¡Feliz Navidad!
¡Próspero Año Nuevo! in green and red glitter on their window.

         Oakland, California, December 2025

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Alison Luterman’s five books of poetry are The Largest Possible Life, See How We Almost Fly, Desire Zoo, In the Time of Great Fires, and Hard Listening. She also writes plays, song lyrics, and personal essays. She has taught at New College, The Writing Salon, Catamaran, Esalen and Omega Institutes and writing workshops around the country, as well as working as a California poet in the schools for many years.