sunday, and the children wave their palms
with excited eyes and spreading smiles.
palm branches! palm branches! they shout.

a life incredible, vivid, excellent.
sunday, and the children wave their palms
with excited eyes and spreading smiles.
palm branches! palm branches! they shout.
the crowd gathers in,
eager, excited, waiting
for the arrival
of the champion.
we planted the peas today
rolled their plump green bodies
into the black bacterial dust
gardeners call inoculant
and then tucked them one by one
under the soil
today the warmth returned
and the blond-haired boys were
running wild through beds
of brittle hydrangea
and barren rose canes
when the littlest
still unsteady on his feet
caught his teddybear bib on a thorn
we’ve had a cold snap again
frost nipping the eager blooms
of the japanese magnolias
and kissing the bricks
that weight the blanket
stretched over the half-moon bed
of drowsing flowers
yesterday morning the newly-fallen flakes
lay large and lacy atop the earlier shroud of snow
when i woke the snow
was once more falling
what once was whole has now been riven
and the guilty soul bows to be shriven