Almost Warm

Season of melt and welcome settledness, 
when she need not walk for hours in cold and dark,

or by day, move from the public library, to 
hospital waiting room, to bus station, and back.

Now she can stay all night on one park bench,
and new leaves overhead fend off any sudden shower.

All around, bushes thicken, green again, shielding
her from passersby, their resentful wary looks.

She doesn’t mind the children playing on the paths.
The fountain runs again, where coins tossed with wishes

mean a cup of coffee. She can cast off newspapers
crumpled between her layered sleeves, remove her socks—

until a heavy rain. Then she seeks shelter under
an overpass, with others. Some are not strangers.

No calendar to trigger Easter, but the way the worms 
come up out of the dirt when it is soaking wet—

writhing on the sidewalk, caught between drowning, 
pecking robins, or the threat of heedless footsteps—

reminds her of old lessons about the lucky savior,
rising golden from the tomb after his days of torment.

Almost warm. Birds build nests now. It’s second nature.
She scouts for empty cans. Maybe someone’s half-eaten lunch.





Jeanne Julian is author of Like the O in Hope and two chapbooks. Her poems are in Kakalak, RavensPerch, Gyroscope, and elsewhere, and have won awards from Reed Magazine, Comstock Review, I-70 Review, and Naugatuck River Review. Her book reviews appear in Main Street Rag. She lives in Maine. www.jeannejulian.com