To Wit, To Dote


When the mind minds sometimes, then doesn’t mind at all,
heart’s boarded up, then downy-nested, opened wide,

is it that “certain age” when trees take off their clothes for cold,
or spell when, feeling ill, they foolishly send all their buds?

Well, hello illness, I know you. You’re the tiresome guy who stays
too long, drinks all the wine, and finally spins us dry. Anon,

anon., I say: Not I soon enough. The garbage gods
will come collect. Will wit be wizened then, or I awake?

Will the alarm cat pounce in such a nick? Do you think? I hope.
I hope for purring on that day, for some great beast’s vibrations.

But now (dear words), but now, the brave plum finds the vertical
to measure February’s shorts and longs—short tenderness

of bud, longing reach for blue which sounds cry’s hues, gymnastics
in four-chambered pump, flappery of feathered thing,

limbs’ wish to hold the whole of spring in some fine dotery
now, while inner space is lightened by a growing sense of sky.