March Song

The snow melts away like smoke of battle,
unveiling brittle stubble and stiff limbs stacked
higgledy-piggledy.

Blown bags hang in tatters from tilted trees--
banners and standards above the bones of deer
who fell to knee beneath Orion.

And where the garden bloomed is craters and debris,
and the shrubbery bombed to ground by ice.
And here, in me, also ice.

The work of the sun is yet to come--the welling water,
the flower and the fruit of peace. But in this moment--
this is the whole of the song.

Nowhere is an eye that still can open.
Not one bright wing in all this drear surround.

Dale Hobson