from my unpublished second collection
Slate gray lake. Willows in a rough wind. On the far island, where the shoreline is tattered with fallen trees, it is not yet spring.
The waves won’t allow it, won’t allow anyone to land there, let alone to leave. Not today; maybe not for a long time to come.
The bramble takes care of that, shadows and old leaves covering the snow, a quilt and a cradle,
the bramble carefully knitted so you must take the one path through the place, or grow wings.
Or grow to about the size of a groundhog, for all the larger animals have starved, or left no offspring, or fell through the thin ice trying to get back.
I never imagined such happiness could fit into two days out of the month. It is morning and I don’t get up—
how easy. The shutters in need of painting. The tall grass, stunted all winter, already too tall to mow.
First published in Ploughshares
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