From the Fishouse

I trust initial states, my mental Delaware:
As parting snows will downy up the dirt beds,
impatient daffodils debut their taxi silks.
One imagines a garden of dormant lilacs,
dried rattle bags of Columbine, spring ready.

All this among the winter head games—
an old man in his Pisan compound, worse,
in his own head—a diplomatic endgame,
Muoio perché non posso morire.

I put the book down and think of blooming,
move my city of nine gates much closer to the window—
the god cannot burn straw before the godhead,
nor can it blow away the selfsame hay—
I think of prayer as a winterspring caesura
and faithfully make hymns for flowerheads
apocryphal beneath the fallen snow.