The Petrified

By Thomas Page

The world around me is starting to petrify.
The leaves are graying and the grass dies.
The evergreens even start to lose their gloss.
The public will start to hang colorful lights to combat the cold
But the sun sets earlier and earlier, almost by the morn.

The lights will come down and the shade will take over the streets.
Old man winter is making the land imagō suī.
Snow will start to blanket the landscape in its splendor.
A petrified garden dipped in ice flanks black ice.
The public will spice their drinks and season their dishes
In hopes to capture another moment of summer
But cinnamon, nutmeg, and sage do not a summer make.

This chorus, strophe and antistrophe, will whirl around the year
“It’s too hot,” “It’s too cold,” “It’s too perfect.”
The epode concludes that the weather is never nice enough.
The Athenians drank wine whirling around in chalices.
The Americans drink beer brimming cups and spirits spilling on barstools.

They toast to a new year, another circumnavigation around the sun.
They toast to a new version of themselves and the people around them.
They toast to new health that will delay the last trip around the sun.
They toast to new sunrises, new children, new dreams, new passions around the T.V.
As the ball drops onto the new year around the sun.

Revelers stream out of bars on the new seconds they’ve earned
Into the petrified forest waiting for them.
The chilled air fits their face and they sober up
Into taxis and ubers and trains they go
Passing along the garden of the dead nature brimming with the life ahead.
Another trip around the sun!
Another chance, another chance, another chance!
People live for another chance.

The pallid bark soon starts to hue
With the rites of spring.
Soon the petrified will exit stage right
For the majesty of blossoms and ducklings,
The living forest.
People will forget the promises made on the night of the petrified.
The earth has tilted towards the sun and all is new again.
The chance is realized in paschal days of May.

But the chorus must come out in strophe

“It’s too hot”

And in antistrophe

“It’s too cold”

Finally in epode:

“It’s never nice enough.”

The petrified waits in the wings for its cue.