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 skinso 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 prancethrough swept piles, and the generalmayhem 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 heartof a nation. There are neighbors who aren’t herebut should be, and so much has been destroyedthat can never be put right again, at least notin this brief lifetime. Where’s the bottom and howwill we know when we’ve reached itis the question not even the black-clad astrologercan answer, but I do know my friends are downat Home Despot as I speak, clanging pots and pansand fighting the kidnappers who come for the menwho only want work, and othersblocked the intersections around ICE officesin 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 stillpresiding 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.

**** Originally published in the online journal OneArt.

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