Perilous Spring

March 28, 2011

I can taste spring in my mouth.
The crocuses bud and blossom
and somehow do not freeze
when the night's chill falls
and frost still forms on
the old fall leaves.
Still, there is sun, and more
of it each day, warm afternoons,
bright skies, fog rising
from snow subliming in shadow.

In this knife's-edge time,
I can taste my future
away beneath my tongue, behind
my teeth, and rising up
into sinus and tear duct.
It sings of fresh paint
and wood floors and turned earth,
a new home full of space and light,
potential realized,
a wide yard with oaks, pines, maple
already rampant with sap, maybe
a fruit tree or two,
and still space for a garden,
neat rows waiting for seedlings,
perhaps a henhouse - fresh eggs -
perhaps a pasture - goat's milk, cheese -
but most of all, oh yes,
mostly the taste of completion,
of having found the house, the school,
the new life we crave in our bones
like thaw, like water, like sleep.

All these tastes
that linger like ghosts in my mouth
terrify me.
I cannot breathe out
for fear they will scatter
like new snow.