Spring

Mother tried to take her life.

The icicles thawed.

The house, a wet coat

we couldn’t put back on.

Still, the garden quickened,

the fields were firm.

Birds flew from the woods’

fingertips. Among the petals

and sticks and browning fruit,

we sat in the grass and

bickered, chained daisies, prayed.

All that falls is caught. Unless

it doesn’t stop, like moonlight,

which has no pace to speak of,

falling through the cedar limbs,

falling through the rock.

“Spring” first appeared in Poetry, Volume 195, No. 2, November 2009, and is from The Tulip-Flame (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2014).