Poem

An old favorite that still works for me. I just can't get over that it was thirty years ago. Could have been this morning.

March




Now is March
coming in like a lamb with a fleecing of snow -
a woolen morning, warm but white
And the sun at noon now steep enough
over the shed to shine on the last
of our winter wood. It’s rock maple, the wrists
and forearms of our front-yard grandfather; unsplit,
dense - wood that could sink like a stone
But it’s the bark of some of those brown-
skinned upper limbs that so reminded me
of something else - of a rather long conclusion

The bark, beaded and smooth, was
like the brown backs of brook trout, thick
at the fisheries in Spring. It was self-
satisfying to recognize the relationship
And I smiled as I stacked those
loaves of fishes in the shed, recalling
their cool color in the tank, their school motion,
their flash from green to gray to brown
like leaves, high in a tree, swimming in night.


March 2, 1981