Fruit of Lost Winter
February 27th Lower Peninsula of Michigan
One week of true cold and snow is all
This year
Today is the warmest day ever recorded
For this entire month
An ancient age is passing
Winter shorter
To the flowing length of my shadow
Stretched longer and further from the elder sun
In my backyard
Pileated Woodpeckers like black-eyed dolls
Dressed in too-tight red coats
Are early treasures
To the arms of Silver Beeches and Black Walnuts
Forest thrashes
At the tiny blades of hundreds of robins
Descended
Mis-led
By a premature pull of migration
Too soon
Those permanent words pursed to the lips of us all
When doomed
A philosopher once said that the universe knows
A life is the same in purpose
Whether it be a still birth or that of a 90-year old
Mother or father
I’m not so sure but intrigued
Robins continue to fork and fling last year’s gray leaves
Up in the air and out of the way
To their mad determined pecks at the hard ground
And knotted branches
With pure instinct my house of cats
Look up
Duck and trill at the windows
Like London dodging the Blitzkrieg
Birds can go back to sleep
But blossoms cannot
There’s not much future left
For Michigan’s apple and cherry orchards
This I know in my old bones
As the robins sing
The fragrance of fruit a sail of the past
On the Maiden’s misplaced wind.
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