Renee Emerson

The dogwoods are flaring,
and just like that, it’s spring again.

The Bradford pears too–
I watch them
scattering their weak snow
in the wind.

I don’t remember all this happening last year.
I don’t remember the white
arms hanging, bursting with collected sunlight,
the smells, petals massing in the parking lot.

Now the pond between shopping plazas
teems forth as well:
geese herding
their tousled goslings
up the banks, herons silent as ghosts
while wrens fall through and around
the scrub pines.

Soon the azaleas will blush
like beautiful girls, their virgin buds undressing,
and I will walk past them with my eyes
averted, modesty
for myself, myself as careworn and poor
this year as the last; getting older
and ready at last
to welcome those changes,

what of me is scattered
and collected, what heaps and
pools, that which is carried
away by winds
and that which grays under too much sun.