Spring Snow

Spring snow is falling on the Lackawanna:

flakes like butterflies that fail to land.

The river is a thick black tongue tonight,

wet-leathery and dumb.

I listen like a fool

to what cannot or won’t be said.

I’m old or young, I can’t quite tell.

This bygone winter was a kind of hell,

but now it’s over. I can dream

of daffodils like women in their yellow dresses.

I would love to suck their long green stems

and twirl a finger in their tresses.

Just below me, I can feel

the trembling roots and tubers,

suck and cipher in the sudden swell.

And something in the air’s alive again.

The ice-floes shelve and break

along the shoreline’s smudge of pain.

I lean into the shadows, come what may.

Even the stones melt fast around me

as the ground gives way.