Halloween decorations through Presidents' Day
As if the maple
were issuing a warning,
the witches’ hats still hang
branch after branch,
months after autumn.
A limp skeleton
hand still reaches
out of the ground
one block over. Beneath
it, larkspur begins its
tyrannical bloom.
Still, this side of Seattle,
everyone makes a nest
of scraps and yard.
Fencing and unfencing
wildflower, rosemary, fig
naming, unnaming
field, wild, garden.
I love the way that our neighbors have made and remade their yards so many times that it feels like you could dig up dirt and find a toy from decades ago: a shovel, a pail… a plastic skeleton. It looks as though the ground is rippling and alive, putting planters in their places.
This poem to me encapsulates Spring. Despite the snow flurries while writing this, Spring seems to have come early this year - birds singing more than usual, blooms on trees and ground cover - it comes against the odds, when no-one is looking.
Thanks, as always, for reading.