Spring Sestina
nearly noon, the faint sun slices
through thick spring fog, dark
with winter’s gloom, heavy with fatality:
defeated daffodils’ crisp blooms, cut
tulips’ bulbs shrinking into earth,
a dew worm mining to the surface
the crimson-bellied robin surfaces
through cold air, the flight slices
until stick feet meet warm, wet earth,
eyes scan lawns and ditches dark
with winter sleep, the worm cuts
through to the robin’s charge, a fatality
among spring’s chalk marks of fatality
struck against the papery surface
of birch bark, each mark cuts
into the trunk, rips and slices
death as a jagged mark in dark
congealed blood of waking earth
she is still there deep in the earth
calling her children one fatality
then another, through each dark
season sinking down from surface
still air vibrates, incantations slice
through reality, scrape and cut
to the unknown, slash and cut
to another side of the dynamic earth,
the oblivious hyacinth slices
through, refuses to be a fatality
of the season and sings to the surface,
sun shines on the purple florets dark
with pride, ardent hope, like the dark
winter nights that momentarily cut
south past the equator only to surface
after the humid summer sweat, earth
taking in her own fatality
battered by tiny atmospheric slices
dark proud mares issue youth to the earth
no fatality can work past homogenous cuts
slices of vitality embrace her broad strong surface
