What comes back. What we let back in. The long slow work of re-entering our own lives.

Return

A spring orbit. Something is loosening. This week we turn toward what is coming back, and what we are finally ready to let come back.

Harshness vanished. A sudden softness
has replaced the meadows' wintry grey.
Little rivulets of water changed
their singing accents. Tendernesses,

hesitantly, reach toward the earth
from space, and country lanes are showing
these unexpected subtle risings
that find expression in the empty trees 

Early Spring

Harshness vanished. A sudden softness
has replaced the meadows' wintry grey.

The Thaw

a beard through my skin
a cracking in my voice
a train ticket with names written on the back
a bright green binder under my shirts

when winter came i was a girl
as i slept under the ice she drifted away
when spring thaws the ground
and melts the ponds
i will have sunk into the shape of a man