Winter Gives Up Its Ghost
Long winter, your teeth are coming loose.
Out the window, dead leaves hang themselves
from branches. Weathered sneakers pigeon-toe
from low-flying wires.
Bitter has turned its back on us, grows smaller
as it trudges down the potholed road. Your afternoon
dilute light is straining to concentrate
on forsythia as it scrawnies along a chain-link fence.
Long winter, you smell less like the grave, more like
the hyacinth someone planted in your heaved earth
last spring.