In May  by Nancy Schatz Alton

Seven years is the change you were seeking

When you didn’t know that

Life changes every seven years

That’s what you learned

Sitting in Esther’s house

Which is a collage of her life

That holds you in an embrace

When how she sees you

As a box of light

Breaks the hold

My box of dark

Has on me

Can I say me?

That I am a box of light

Stepping away from

Seven years of story

Into new story

Breaking into bloom

The bloom that happens

In the rain

In the dark spring

In rainy May

In Esther’s house

The house of collage

With a giant clock

That reads 5:20

An exterior clock

A clock that makes you wonder

If the neighbor’s notice when the time changes

When the time matches real time

A clock facing out

That’s broken

Yet working

Like all of us

Broken yet working

Piling through 7 years

Until new light hits us

In rooms all over the world

In places like Esther’s house

Where we pick up a new piece

When a box of light

Suddenly collapses

The box of dark

No, makes use of

One box of dark

Turns dark into beauty

Exactly like the way

Esther and I walk her neighborhood

Mark the houses with our words

Say how we’d change them for the better

Make our own light

In this world

That insists on darkness

We turn it into a light spring rain

In May: the best season of the year.