Spring

By the time we got back the street had been done

by a bunch of starlings, all of them drunk

and very abusive. I went round the block

three times to avoid them. The local tom

was out on the rampage. The precinct’s trees

were growing their leaves like insects again,

a crop of locusts that all wanted in

to the butter-lit rooms. Our diaries

gave hope that the fever of spring and its wounds

would soon be over. No need to ask why

when car-alarm birds called love at the sky.

A fish like a storm cloud swallowed our moon.