VERSE

...they've done it right this year, it is spring as scheduled, and fresh...

...it is every morning of our lives, it is each new thing, it is even Sunday and there are the hills coming out of a daze and we are not cows we are horses rushing into such light like forever, the woodpecker heard before he is seen tapping the time, and the tree he taps, waiting to break into blood like song, we are even the one-inch leaves of the lilies, the field open to anything, and then we are back, I open my window and thin white curtains blow in like old times...

...MARTHA COLLINS WE COME TO NEW HAMPSHIRE AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENS Everything is as it should be: the clean white houses, the shutters that really shut out the cold, the maples hung with buckets, the pines and the hemlocks, one red barn, bright doors, and we enter the scene at the start of the first day of spring like cows on the way to the field, but rounding a bend we run into the sun, the very thing, and warm...