1

This is poison: David
fingers something budding
in my backyard. Kneeling
in the mud,

David says, otter. He
shows me where the beaver
dragged a poplar sapling
to the river,

where the elderberry
topped on a clean bevel
shows the mark of browsing
at the level

of last season’s snowfall,
finds the high-bush
blueberries in the naked
underbrush —

he in the cool evening
for a moment rightful
owner of my garden,
I a spiteful

creature in his footsteps,
naming all the animals
in their habits, birds
by their calls.

2

The northwest wind drums yesterday’s blizzard
into a victory dance, four feet thick
over the budding crocus and daffodils.

We scatter all our store of sunflower seeds
and popcorn for the puzzled birds. Split wood
lies like Shiloh’s dead under the blossoms.

This Eastertide, it is winter resurrected
to preach the annual triumphant sermon
on the impermanence of burial.

Good Friday finds us shoveling out the cars
in perfect sunshine, the day as long as ever,
white as a lily everywhere we look.

3

A hiss of hail on the new grass,
stones the size of my whitened
fingernail flail the daffodils
into confetti for half an hour,
as if you had said, I’m leaving,

and afterwards, ice dissolving
in the furrows, around the fisted
fiddleheads, and pursed tulips
nodding in their slashed foliage
as if you had said, I didn’t mean it.

4

I have washed my hands of winter in the spring dirt,
grubbing for granite, first fruit of the garden
every year. The pallor has rubbed off on my shirt,
leaving my fingers rich and dry and brown.

My arms have taken to the spade like a swimmer
lapping out the first long rows where the seed
will lie like beads brimming in the wake of summer,
tangling upward clean as the sickle’s blade.

My legs rock on the slow heave of the year,
learning to balance once again to the roll
of shifting earth, to the light wind off the river,
to the rhythm of dip and swell, of dip and swell.

–J. Kates,
Metes and Bounds
Accents Publishing