This Year---an old poem made new.

The buds of the magnolia have browned
All at once

Like a half-charged memory growing ill
And withered in the new light

By Sir Frost’s shocking freeze
And the latent echoing

Of his sonorous footfalls
Crushing gestures from Size 12 steel-toe boots

This mere shadow of a bloom heals me

With its smothered vow of surety

And the soft cry of hope within

Its withered frame

As the brown petals meet
The earthy ground
 My own sun-touched arms unfurl 

To greet

The spirited Master Spring as he
Leaps silently forward
Within grassy slippers as delicate
As my own lusty breath.