A Place for My Melancholy to Roost

A Fact Check Me Poem

I'm tired of sunny days

Give me drear and rain And the trees bare of leaves Cool days And a cornucopia on my kitchen table

Give me a place For my melancholy To roost

Dried-out cornfields And mud under my feet Soggy days that Give way to cloudy Sky nights

Let me chop wood For a fire I may not light

I want the ghost of Guy Fawkes To free us from our own personal tyrannies

Let me tell spooky ghost stories While drinking bad whiskey And strumming Gordon Lightfoot poorly On my beat-up guitar

Let the minstrel carry away Our regrets for the lives we never led

Let me root for the monsters I watch on screens in the dark And pumpkin spice And Saturdays at farmers markets Hand me my sweater With the hole in the sleeve

I want to stuff my face With tiny candy bars And my mom's caramel apples While the discipline Of my workouts Falls by the wayside

Let's complain about Christmas decorations On shelves before October Has loosened its grip

My wife will change the wreaths Four times in three months As I carry them Up and down the stairs

Then let me play Blue Christmas On November 1st With that record that sat in my parents' home For as long as I can remember

Let it give way To Nat and Frank Duke and Ella

Let me taste lips That familiarity Could never temper My desire for

I'm going to sit down for ramen While the kid who carries my last name Orders in Japanese— The Chinese waiter Staring blankly

Let friends come and go And guess who'll still be here Come New Year's

Shorter days Giving way to longer nights And an excuse To hide under the covers And sleep like a bear in winter

My soul hibernating Sustained by the wine And chocolate Turkey and lamb That will flow through Easter

Learn to put down The loads that have been accumulating For years

It made no difference If you carried them Or no

Let death draw breath So life can begin again.