Two Months After
A clutch of rain against the windows.
All day this beaten house has been bearing up
under the March wind, a wind that aches
down the thick beams the carpenter cut
to take its weight. A mud-covered truck
drones up the hill, under a stone sky.
Spring will come only after the hard work
of the water is done, after the high
green leaves have shouldered their sparks
through the winter's ancient test.
Perhaps then the hard ice of your death
will have rotted away. In Schubert's songs
I listen for your listening, for the arc
of smoking notes your night-heart sang.
