March 10th and the snow flees like eloping brides
into rain. The imperceptible change begins
out of an old rage and glistens, chaste, with its new
craving, spring. May your desire always overcome

your need; your story that you have to tell,
enchanting, mutable, may it fill the world
you believe: a sunny view, flowers lunging
from the sill, the quilt, the chair, all things

fill with you and empty and fill. And hurry because
now as I tire of my studied abandon, counting
the days, I’m sad. Yet I trust your absence, in everything
wholly evident: the rain in the white basin and I

vigilant.

[from Many Junipers, Heartbeats, Copper Beech Press, Brown University, Providence, R.I. Reprinted with permission of the author]