bitter and turned cold

a dry rattle among raspberry canes rainsticks
against grasses, air, a puff-laugh escaping thoughts,
hairroots of hundred year elms motion quelled

blink at the bleak wet-denim-black
trunks shuddering stripped of leaves.
spring blossoms are ludicrous naive hope

yet poplar buds already have nubs swollen
reddening nervous system molecularly jittering,
tense, release, beneath snow crust, beneath

the frozen humus the shapes of roots
(that are spread ready) are an echo,
an aboveground silhouette of summer

the dormancy is thinner than voice,
hard edge levers choice to pace
their whetted lines to scraps of heat

to the pendulum swings of moon.
a viscous stickiness thins to liquid primed
– mid-winter strains to stay within its own confines

scraped hickey of dirt, thin flake of frozen not
inert, bold voles stroll the airspace snatching
beetles flipping to back of tongue, air humid enough

to be wrung. Impossible is an imp of bull bones
a trickster crow that knows when all is lost
there is no lost place things go. all is here.

feel the memory of the climb, dust-colored bellyhair
black squirrels toenails leave marks on trunk’s bark
comic affrontery charms bloodthirst to swooning coos

Summer never left. It was only playing peek-a-boo
A scare, a one-sided fun. It is down under, wide-eyed
tense to be uncovered, beside the boiler, limp asleep.