Bones

Donald Finkel

We let the forsythia go one more day,
watching the shrivelled yellow duncecaps fall
in a half-circle of broken sunlight on the floor.
Like last week's leftovers; though no one will eat them,
for the crime of waste we take another whiff
before, at arm's length, we relinquish
our tenuous hold into the garbage can.

A week ago I tore two dozen switches
out of the great clump by the driveway,
careful not to disturb, like drops of water,
the dark buds perilous along their length.
We forced them. Some ring that phrase has. We tore
them where they stood and stood them naked
in a bowl, and watched them in synthetic spring
dress themselves and then undress again.
And then one more day we let them stand.

Though what a day mattered to them or us
I couldn't answer, snapping their slender backs
one by one to fit them in the garbage.
Was it the need to let the bare bones read their message
there against the pale wall like a Chinese
character for death-with-feet-in-water?
Outside much more where that came from
nods darkly still in the late winter wind.