Bud

Mildest of winters keeps the heart

Stirred once again to make a start

On the old things.

A file of letters like a trap

Gapes. The mind draws on its sap

For some new rings.

The slumber of the wasps is ours,

Dying in carton, far from flowers,

Or so we reason.

But now the sun shines through a tree

Across my desk, enticingly,

Out of its season

As though the year forgot its drift,

Discovering within its gift

A strange remission

From cycles of that long disease

Which every estimate agrees

Is our condition.

And so I stretch and seek the air

In the dead garden, finding there

Something like you:

One paler and intense ellipse

Signals a bud among the hips,

And one will do.