A springtime sequence

as summer quickly approaches

         Backroad Scroll


Frog-croak 
metronome 
drones from 
the yard’s edge:

green deepening 
green; deepening 
black. What calls 
culls a sense 

of distance—
the unseen 
seen 
through sound.


*


After two days 
of rain 
spring’s 

sacrificial 
flower
rusts 

the fields 
yellow.
Yellow en-

trenched in
green deep-
ening green

under low
cloud shade. 


*


Constant bird clamor
       gives the hours
depth and texture—
       an illegible net
of noise
       made legible 
once the mind withdraws
       to let only light in.


*


   In a cardinal’s wake
a red streak 

          gashed clear
through gauzy haze.



*


              To let only light in—
       to allow the mind
to withdraw. Rain

              falls from sun, 
       sky bright beyond 
description. 


*


Hay bales tied tight in a field
spaced evenly apart 
like phrases
toward an unfinished sentence. 


*


Night birds trill 
as if to trace 
an illegible net 
through the dark, 

to contain 
what contains it—

to defy it. 


*


Spring’s yellow
sacrificial 
flower
surrounds 
scrap metal
stacked beside
a weather-bleached
shed. 



*


      Off-white, 
off-yellow—
       both—tulip 
poplar flowers 
       cloud sky 
       pale 
       with heat.


*


Japanese rose shrub
    spilled up and over
        the back of the shed

levitates—countless 
    flowers webbed—
        a singular white blur—

under the Blue
    Flower Moon’s 
        gray glister. 


*


From this angle
low clouds lean 
into scrub, dense 
at the back end 
of the yard. Wander
       toward the center 
where a space in weeds 
and branches frames 
a white farmhouse, 
white fence, 
       silver silo 
       propping up
       half-sunk sun.



May 8-20, 2019
Dover, Delaware