Ice storrm likely overnight, clearing throughout the day to a high of 55

of a february mind
late april to the shower a chill
one thousand feet above the innocence of
monet that grows on trees
their timbrel sprigs aflow
abeat abeat the sting of thought
stung through with cling of cold
a touch that lingers like the coat of love
upon all forms all forms below
it is a gift dreamed in a gusty night
a diatribe equal to the groundling earth
equal, precise, a measuring in ice
of each line and lobe
like thought is measured in true belief
with the frightful blast of dawn aflame
dripped and trickled to the soil
that can sleep out a thousand strorms strong.

old oak after an April's morning rain

you may observe how
when the rains shatter against
the grit of an oak trunk
it's dyed black from a morning's bluster
as a sinner's heart
and each twig tip dipped like a fountain pen
into a bottle of green ink-deep
as ocean bloom illumined by fingers of sun
is spent of vibrancy when it has traced symmetric lobes
by which you say for certain, "oak"

dispelled from such enchanting origin
through all the months the light is firm
is the business I have no care to note
where all the light goes in

5 year oaklings in gravel parking lot median on a fine April night

the trees backlit
by steroid lot light beautiful as any song
new leaves muscling apart tender buds
might feel a thousand pricks
like a limb in the night after your autopilot moves you
to shift your tourniquet weight
presents to your consciousness a catalog of nerves
influxed by the suffuse of blood from the rush of veins
out to every little cell that makes you whole

have you felt it? the coming alive,
if you had passed unconscious through
stillness fixed as frozen soil
it might seem then
that life is too fierce an effect to follow
dust to dust

and yet
sap rises, rivers flow, the thawing ground
shifts its weight and the crust is pricked right through
and there is perhaps no life that
could be free from such suffusing motion