Spring Romance
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Frail branches extend from pale trees,
their trunks the width of pelvic bones. Ashes
sway in the decaying evidence of
March, the soil moist in the new-found

absence of snow, bacteria reproducing
like lovers roiling in the black peat.
The smell of pine no longer fills the hollow
midsection of winter, the newborn

spring a faint haze of green. He can
see his reflection in a pool of tarnished
liquid, an ice mound melting near
its center. It isn’t him. The water lies.

Instead of eyelashes, he sees the needles
of a hawthorn; instead of hair, leaves and the petals
of flowers. He witnesses his own funeral
as he kneels on the ground.

A bony woman watches from the trunks
behind him, this man who is squat like a hawthorn
yet large as an evergreen—his hair
ossifying into a garment of needles.