March 2021
I am not prolific. I am even less
so in spring. Poems come out
like leaves in the wash
of melting snowbanks: dark,
mangled, things with no shape
at all. And this year,
some leaves never fell. This year
the maples and I look less
like ourselves. Shape-
lier. Quivering. Strange. Without
that grace of a naked branch, dark
and lithe against the rain-washed
sky. To be bare like that! To wash
the ground in auburn. Sleep a year,
wrapped in buds and dark dark
dark. Better yet to be sapling. Less
foliage, umbrage, burden. An out-
crop that has only to learn its own shape.
Though, these unshed maples are shape-
shifters too; a few leaves washed
off slowly, here, there, over a year—
the rest wither inward, out
of the wind, unto themselves. Less-
ons, each one, fixed to the branch. Dark
is the night that shakes one loose. Dark
(and late) is the night I try their shape
in my own words— and words are less
than the leaves are worth: washy,
a reach, like most this year—
but I’ve got to send something out.
I’ve got to pull something out
of my ass, mind, a hat, this dark-
ling, endless, nothing year,
imagine the ends of its writhing shape.
Write it down. Get it off of me. Awash
in death. Like the maples. Less and less.
