The date's a sentence that can be parsed: pattern,
symmetry, sequence. Can I parse the sky this
morning, its complex syntax of cirrocumulus
suggestions? The sunlight's breaking, broken.
Light on the hills is thinner than yesterday's
illumination. The flooding creek is still out of
its banks, but lower. An impulse to measure,
mark: the river the rain the times of sunrise
sunset. I don't know how to take in the fact
that we are at war: overreaching, aggressor,
outlaw. In the garden snowdrops and trash,
hyacinth heads pushing up like green tops of
wooden newels, elaborately carved. Bleeding
heart, rhubarb are purple and red punctuation:
commas, parentheses, stops. Day is a sharp
break from dream, a door shutting. If I had
to invent what I dreamt, I'd say mothering
and the Antipodes. April's forecast is rain,
surges of heat and cold: weather tempered
to my own. I know what I'm ignoring, what
I don't want to know. I'm appalled, ashamed.
Spring doesn't give a damn. Overnight robins
arrive, fat and bold and omnipresent. Lilac,
dogwood in bud, crocus blooming, the shell-
shaped leaves of columbine splay out over
moldy oak leaves, dead grass. Under the
stalks of last year's sedum, this year's leaves
are curled, tight green cabbage roses,
potent, oblivious.