hope like arugula sprouts
big enough to be seen
from a second-floor window
*
cat out and leap-chasing
shadows—sparrow, crow,
flick/sway of still-bare branches
*
water wind-rippled in bird baths
sometimes sun-shimmered, reflecting
on redbud bark
*
that april blizzard and how
we could see again
smooth-swirl snow on rooftops,
dollops on red-budded trees
will you take my voice, now
rough with disuse
again, the way
green pokes out from last year’s brown
leaves, bold of its welcome
no matter how thin
or straggly or
unintended
not the smell of summer but a memory
earth, sun, sweat
or skin or breath, all of it
fading. where a heart stirs yet
beneath these layers of snow
tired of the season’s responsibility
our nerves, words, glances dry-
cracked as winter knuckles
those leaves that still cling, nearly
unrecognizable to our warmer selves
Circumscribed by jail-fence, our privilege
to drop in once a week, we connect
a moment through this earth
fingers sweeping for carrot girth
radish shoulders (divided over kale)
notes on how your mothers make posole
how they worry
how they will adjust
when you finally come home
These kids learn plant
harvest radish lettuce carrot
crush basil oregano thyme
inhale incense of future pizzas
laugh sunbees & quietwords
tongue-burst tomatoes warm from the vine
thought of crowding a few more in
golden days and the last available
space for something bright
(pushed out again by—
you know)
thought butterflies should
not to linger (oh zinnia aster
-oidish collision) but this
brain on going to seed
slight ladders that bring the fence
top in
turned again and told yourself
too late
in this fountaining the flutter
wing-dust and scattered
seed, greening
why should you not return
to heartening beneath
your one-note lament
and need for salt don’t say
it’s always the same
for when have you ever noticed
roses blown open to rain
robins food-screeching
in your window-tree?
you won’t say they’re unfeeling
the cable men digging a coffin-sized hole
obliterating a season’s worth of green
growing by your back fence—
if anything you feel
for them, waist-deep and it’s snowing
and despite your best compost efforts
the earth is still clay—
after all they moved
the plastic gnome smoking his pipe
cross-legged against the rubble,
serene
i.
the cardinal sudden like words
from a friend, bright unexpected
against leafless sky, same sweet
song and soul-balm
ii.
not faith but a kind of pride, your belief
every day should offer something
like this dirt finally warming,
hand-crumbled, enough?
iii.
if the pansies survive
this record cold, it is no god’s bow
to the balance due, nor even
to your impatience
when will I be available to this sun
wanting to warm cloth skin sense
that kernel last lick of faith
in ground that must prove
again and again its fertility
to leaf stem root worm
Graceful Press Poetry 