Change Ahead

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Change Ahead

Michigan—We had so much rain
and lightning shooting into life
last night that worms are advancing,
forming their lines in the streets,
wrestling with asphalt, terrain,
finding ways to extend their white,
pink, and six-inch ruddy selves
into the margins, signaling change
ahead like a barricade of brown,
like miniature rusted silos, moving,
where he says in his yard, I used
to work up there at the co-op, but
they’re going to move those silos—
someone wants them for a recording
studio, he says, scraping fingernails
against siding like a twisty worm—
so, I walk farther, past four-leaf
clovers and a freckled girl, where
worms crawl under her feet, but
her face is smiling like change.

Jan Wiezorek writes from Michigan. His work appears, or is forthcoming, in The London Magazine, The Westchester Review, Lucky Jefferson, Loch Raven Review, Minetta Review, Talon Review, Modern Poetry Review, The Passionfruit Review, Sparks of Calliope, The Wise Owl, Poetry Center San José, and The Orchards Poetry Journal, among other journals. He taught writing at St. Augustine College, Chicago, and wrote the ebook Awesome Art Projects That Spark Super Writing (Scholastic, 2011). He posts at janwiezorek.substack.com.