Spring’s a Love Note and I’m Lonely as Hell

Spring’s a Love Note and I’m Lonely as Hell

Bouquet #1

Violets bloomed from sidewalk cracks on my walk
west this morning and I thought of you, how
if you were here too I’d pick one slim stalk,
touch it to your face, then mine. The blooms bow

to the passing of each hour, held aloft
briefly by their beauty, an offering -
spring’s reward after hard frost, earth’s softer
lines returning in greens and blues, bright wings

that winter kept still and secret, each one
a tiny flight suppressed by storms and black
nights, until some wheel began to turn, sun
burning overhead again, taking back.

There is joy in all of this, and pure need -
spring’s a love note, a glance we gladly read.

What I Have Tried to Say to You

The streets are foreign now, the sidewalks wet
with autumn rain, the lake with its thousand
thousand green eyes holding onto the edge
of summer. Nothing has been as it was.
That Sunday night, I went outside to look
for my hands in the mist. I could drop a rock
and almost hear it sinking. In the garden,
I saw a cloudburst had beaten down the stalks,
savaged the fruits. There was the threat of a thunderstorm.
I faced west, taking it all very seriously. In someone’s
tiny book, this all made sense. It meant people should
live miles or years apart, that distance is best
measured by silence or the swiftness of rivers
or how far one can pitch a stick across a canyon. 
You walk through one door and then another. I can
see your back, the way you hold your head. I see you
and cannot imagine ever seeing the last of you.
It is the farthest shore, the one that no map ever shows.
Still, there is a way to know what’s coming,
to understand why some people collect stones
or write in block print or suddenly become happy
after a long time of barely getting by.