Deceit

The daffodils, deceived, lie drifted,
their outrage muted by the snow,
thick with cunning silence falling.
The romance of green Spring forestalling,
with frigid kiss ere it can grow.

Ides of March

In-blowing-storm-grayed distant hills...
Leaflorn last-of-winter frayed trees...
All caught between are promised deep bone chills
by winds too fraught with rage to be called a breeze.
Then pecking rain far colder than the winter's snows
and in the looming oak, a murder of crows.

Diver

At the cliff's edge,
I prepare my dive.
Behind my shoulder, a voice says,
Wait. There's no
ocean there, below.
That's an abyss.

The Scent of Memory

Four year old Abraham’s hair, not fresh from the bathtub,

just any day when I grab him up, breathe him deeply in

smells like memory of hayfields in late summer, stubbled

with cut grasses, alfalfa, clover, sun-dried, wind-rowed,

ready for bailing. I run my fingers through his hair

like I ran through those August childhood fields, scab-kneed,

sun- freckled, momentary as the cabbage butterflies

that lit on the clover. My nose in his soft, earthy waif’s mop,

I am spread unthin across time, and miles, and the full span

of human capacity

for joy.