spring seeps in
with great grey rains
and a shifting sun
that could try harder.

small things whisper
and rush to hide
beneath rotting wood
and ancient bricks,
squirming there
in soil that keeps
and breathes life
in April.

green shoots glance
tentatively through
hazy morning light,
pushing through
earthworms and detritus
to gift me one
small wink
as I brush the earth
from my human hands.

it is a great exchange
from the vast frozen sheets
of glittering death
and pale winter sun
into the world of the living.
it is an awakening
of sleeping seeds
and tendrils

and it is more like
a rebirth,
as my limbs stretch
and bloom with the trees
and a quiet smile once again
comes to rest
on this gratuitous
winter face.

Silence twists around my throat,
serpentine in the inky light,
as the paint sticks
and dries beneath my fingernails.

Ideas claw at my solar plexus
threatening sycophancy
treason and madness
in a world of stale passion
and stuttering ignorance.

They wake up and shower,
****, shave, apply the mask
with painstaking detail.
They die before they reach thirty
and go on walking about
as if they know the secret
to eternal bliss-
it's possible that they do,
after all.

I mean, consider the alternative-
an artist haunted by the colors
that live in a winter sunrise,
a nomad reaching for no one
as he chases the sun
across mercurial landscapes,
a writer living through ink
because there's no other way
to quell the storms,
a human shedding expectations
for beautiful things
that will always be broken.