Spring is a time for poetry. And so I share with you what I wrote this morning.

One Morning in March

It is March,
still winter,
and the white sky
seeks to remind us of it,
hunching low over the bare treetops
like a fog.

Yet this day we recall
that we did not
settle upon a glacier
or the icy moon Europa,
but upon earth.

Grass,
brown and bored,
peeks from beneath
the serrated grimaces of soiled snowbanks,
so reluctant to give any ground
to spring.

Traffic lanes and parking spots
we had forgotten
grow at the margins of this white world
like the black beaches of some volcanic island
still forming.

The wreckage
of the ice storm emerges
like an ancient ruined metropolis.
Oh, yes, we say,
I remember that storm.
Only the snow made me forget.

I pick up the keys
I dropped in the driveway—
the first dirt
to work its way under my fingernails
since November.

Inside
the dog’s muddy prints
on the kitchen floor
don’t raise my ire.
I don’t sigh and say, “Sasha!”
as I might have.

We shake ourselves awake
at the birds.
Birds.
That’s right, we say
in wonder.
There are birds.