Cutleaf toothwort bloom
drawn out in lean cold April,
the month of poems.

First hepatica
in the woods I’ve walked for years,
each time with new hopes.

For now, I belong,
walking along this river,
breaking and moving.

Trout lily and moss
colonies under our feet,
feeding the season.

A simple shadow,
the gentleness of the day,
Ohio cornfield.

Birds sang songs for night,
everyone loved the world,
moon shadowed the sun.

Solar eclipse at totality, April 8, 2024, Napoleon, Ohio.

First forsythia,
patient as a sundial
at the end of day.

To keep what’s vital,
our feet walking on this earth,
stardust on stardust.

A woodpecker drum
fills the early spring forest
and scarlet elfcups.

For seventeen years,
an old drawing of roses,
inside a loved book.

A spray of blue jays—
they’re wheeling from tree to tree,
calling as they go.

Confiding beech trees
hold cardinals as they sing,
song reaching their roots.

Skunk cabbage shoulders
nudging out of the spring swamp
for winter-hungry deer.

Hard against the wind,
waiting it out in late March,
lilac’s beginning.

Forest floor below,
woodpeckers fly overhead—
my ancestors, both.

Do you remember
the long walk on pine needles—
the soft tender life?

Bouquet of splitgill
blooming from inside the tree,
pinned at the center.

Sized for hummingbirds,
lined with fur and milkweed silks
and afternoon sun.

I breathe on this earth,
decades next to this river,
I am weight, weight, weight.

Crows fly at sunrise
in loose, sprawling formation,
each voice fills the sky.