it’s april
the leaves are breaking open their wax scales
and putting out pale tongues to the light
the slick birches are sloughing off skin
so many flowers too the trees calving these soft-
bodied blooms which flare and die in an hour
and oh my love whose restless hands don’t still,

your mouth is livid
as a branch impelled up by flowers

history is drowning there
and in the sunlight which washes the day pale to nothing
and in the vivid clapping of the pale leaves as they emerge knocked roughly
by the spring wind which takes in its arms a roomful of blossoms

open your mouth
let the wind in which takes all succor and turns it into song