Day: March 14, 2021

Soon I will forget again
the bitterest days of the year.
When the east spread a weathered hand
building winter palaces out of frost.
When the winds from the North harried me home
and sent the shepherd flying to the hills.
Ewes with Spring lambs swaying in their bellies
hastened to the fold, dogs barely nipping
at their heels.

Time enough for rook and raven to patrol the fields
preening in purple, blues and green. They’ll pick dung
for beetle and worm, peck the white eyes of the stillborn.
Weasels will ferret out warm afterbirths, bold and brisk
as quicksilver. For now though the sharp-toothed hunters
in achromatic guise are liquefying into landscapes.
The prey is sparse but the food stores, full
where winter has clasped the age-old, the incurable
the weakened-by-hunger. And sometimes a careless mouse
corridoring under the snow, watched by the ears of a fox.

Soon I will forget again
all the old pains and griefs gone cold.
After the child is birthed
we do not dwell, and Spring’s urgent emergings
– up from the ground – out from the bud
will send me hurtling into another year.