Oh, March Was Crueler

“You made it to the start of Sunday
believing in something, not that church,
just the chorus of birds in the morning dark;

while you reveled in your pink dogwood
and snapped barren hydrangea sticks, you spent
the afternoon cutting up a fig tree killed

in a December freeze, wanting to shout
to your neighbors that God had no role
in maiming the plants in their yards. Sigh.

I tell you, the last weeks have been rough,
things living and people newly dead
challenged each other’s supremacy—

a friend gone is first a dream, then a pause
then, like love, a continuing surprise.
A ghost is someone who’s passed but

whose footprint hasn’t faded yet. It will.
You just wait for Easter’s determined
celebration of death shadowing rebirth!

‘Til then try not to be bitter, ever colder,
as a later freeze finishes off what still
had a chance. The continents have settled;

everything else grabs and snatches,
stakes claim. We push our own folk into
The ground while all nature wants

out of there through the slightest sliver in
the crust. We like rows; seeds and shoots
take opportunity anywhere. We try to time

bad weather, while it skulks and glances
at us, sudden and unwelcome like a coyote.
Our prayer: that disaster dabbles in the distance.

The first lie I ever heard was about three pigs
and a wolf, like somehow there was a way
to build a house of life that’s strong enough.”