dressed for spring

midway up the hill
the neighbor’s weeping fig
is dressed for spring
a gown of bridal white blossoms
shielding leafless branches.

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the lily bed

if i had any rage i took it out on the lily bed and its web of ingrown roots the fruit of thirty years of spawning tigers i scythed and hoed, slicing through sod separating innumerable worms from their other ends and cleaving through the rusty orange roots that choked the ground until, at last,…

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prelude

the sharp blade pierced the greening grass
and shovelfuls of soil revealed wakened worms
shrinking away from the light

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skeptical soil

ten trees arrived in the mail today
their tender trunks scarcely more than twigs
but already I was imagining the bank
of white blossoms in the spring —
hawthorne, dogwood, crab —
and the pale hellebores i’d bought
that would start blooming in the snow

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April first

this morning we awoke to a film of frost
sparkling on the grass
as fickle spring once more laughed
in our foolish faces

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