This morning, the spell broke.
Put your hand in my heart, feel the tender new shoots–
ferns shouting back at a creek like two songs.
You came like a season, bearing gifts for the animals.
Cresting a hill known for decades as only the beautiful place.
Shouting for bears and worrying the ground for salamanders,
still hidden beneath their cool, stone furniture.
And the heart, an animal. Myself, an animal,
flinching back from the horses. From the intimate
shove of their breath, the ropework of powerful muscle
beneath their coats, vast and wild and slow.
It’s the time of year we all need a good, hard rub
to shed the old, dry casing. Need uncommon mercy,
the white umbel of wild ginseng at the forest’s floor.
Love like a carrot in your fist.
Yes, even death blooms here.
The putrefaction of deer hung pendulous on dusk’s hot gust,
with the frogsong. With the new, pollen yellow of the wind
arcing over a shoulder the color of cinnamon.
Even death blooms here. Atop the lives of all the animals—
our uniform, amniotic fragility surging underfoot.
Born again each year to the same rough earth.
To the same unimaginable luck.