ARISE
Arise! the Moon commands,
It is the New Year.
Trees! Agitate your leaves!
The fellow is not paying attention.
He thinks he has forever to discover who he can be.
***
The Moon is wise to me.
Knows I’ve longed to shed my ways,
But the pocketbook says otherwise;
This is the time to buy some Status Quo.
And the whisper from the Insta hot water tap has my ear:
Isn’t it rich, the warm good life?
Just as it is?
***
Arise! warns the Moon.
It is the New Year.
Wake up!
Wash your feet in freezing water.
While you shake with the cold,
Notice that the spruce boughs run with sap,
And huckleberry branches blush with berries,
Their colors announce they are about to scatter seeds.
You can only watch,
But they are becoming.
***
You! the Moon orders,
Drop to your knees.
Dig your fingers into the ground
Like the roots of a tree,
And search about for a stone to grasp.
Let the music lodged in the rocks flow into your knuckles.
Never mind that your nails are broken,
And that your beard grows white;
You might unearth one song that you can sing.
Can you hear me? she says with love.
It is the New Year.
In 2017 Mike Cohen published his first novel, Rivertown Heroes, to good reviews from Kirkus and others, and and excerpt has appeared in Evening Street Review (July 2020). His collection of eleven short stories, The Three of Us, was published by Adelaide Books in 2018.