Each Spring

Each spring the fig tree bursts at the ends of bare branches like Fido in heat, and there's one empty bird nest: an epigenous ornament out of season in mid-March. "April is the cruellest month," T. S. Eliot wrote. He who understood growth is pain, a thrust of agony. So, be about your birthing, little bush--push out leaves, cringe at the episiotomy of knife and shears. Hear me crooning, "There, there, I will be quick..." No blood spurts out in slash of azalea, in burst of bottlebrush. No inky ooze in purple periwinkle that slept all winter. I prune the shove and shaft of elm, as it fulfills its promise of shade and safety, behead the poisonous crawling vines, their deadly embrace, shake the pines for cones, so perfect, so concise. Would that I might morph that way each spring--perfect, concise, whatever the price.