A roadside wooden cross,
with a bouquet of false flowers -
killed & commemorated this time last
year.

It stands in the retreating snow, revealing
what slept under it all winter, and the
first moth I've seen all year chases
a robin in the echelons of upper branches.

April will be crueler than Eliot could conceive,
so take these poems, spring, these laconic
ramblings I wrote in your father's house.