Prodigals

i go off looking for / my lost winter glove.
Dave Bonta, “Equinox”

I go off looking for my lost winter glove,
prodigal child always wandering off.
I do not have an Emily Dickinson to knit
me another. I think of orphans
in island nations that run
the sweatshops that sew our clothes.

I do not have sympathy for the machines
that sew our clothes, although they are orphans
too. I do not fear
the new AI that comes
for all our jobs. I am tired
of writing in my own voice. Let
the machines do it.

I find a child’s mitten on the sidewalk,
and I put it on the bare branch of a tree
that’s late to bloom. Now it can hold
its own next to the trees festooned
with flowers. Now it offers
its own festivity.

On this first full day of spring,
I return home without my lost glove.
Let it go off to find its fortune.
Maybe it will return by fall.
Maybe I will buy a new pair
at the end of season sales.
Maybe I will move to a new climate,
one without cold seasons
or sweatshops or orphans dispossessed
by alien intelligence coming for us all.