Poems for Post-Tweflth Night

Trouble Coming, by Charles Simic
One saw signs of it in certain families.
The future was like an unfriendly waiter
Standing ready to take their dinner order
From a menu they could not read.

To look without understanding was their lot
While a salesman in the TV store
Kept changing channels too quickly
For them to retain a single image.

The little flags freshly posted in a cemetery
Said nothing as they hung listlessly
In the early summer breeze,
Not that anybody particularly noticed.

The sunset over the approaching city
Was like a banquet in a madhouse
The inmates were happily setting on fire
Just as our train ducked into a tunnel.

My father sent me a whole passel of The New York Review of Books, and the above poem was published there.  The next poem is a haiku written by one of my students last semester and I thought a fitting counterpart to Simic's.

Zipline, by Suzanne Shields
Zipping through the trees
Altitude is everything
Life is delicate.