It’s springtime,
fling yourself
into the green
time, in the
meantime,
while there’s still
time, it’s clean
time, out with
what we don’t need
time, you know
what I mean:
let’s deem ourselves
better than fine,
let’s drink the last
sip of winter’s
wine.
photo by Misha M. Johnson
Winter’s over, shake me out, wash me deep
for the first & final time, says the cheap
winter coat I bought for its greenness and for the love
of its fur I could see myself nesting inside
for so many months, my face a cold photograph
in a frame of fuzz, and the goat blood
on the pocket came out as if the whole ordeal
was just a bad dream I could return with free
shipping! That hairdresser was right, you know–
after the initial shock of loss, my hair grew back
faster than ever. And here I am with my cowboy boots
and my cowkid plaid & my broken wristwatch
in the first wet warm days of a Spring I thought
would stand me up like a hot bad date, & the ends
of my hair are light not from dye but from the sun inside.
I don’t understand how a house is built, the piece-by-pieceness of it all.
And why is a hamburger called that–it’s made of beef. Around here
people say “hamburg” and bang their boots together before swinging
their feet into the driver’s seat. Around here the streets are named
after families who still live on them. This I understand. And how quick
it takes a ram to mount a doe—I get it now. The world’s laid out
on the ground and everywhere I step, I step on it. I’m naming
each new season: after winter, white spring. Then mud, then spring,
then storage, then sticks, then logs. Then winter in her new fur coat
lasts long enough to answer everything. She’s the sweet caesura–
not the roadside flare lit as a cry for help, but the help itself.
***
photo by Misha
panache, perhaps 