February is a season of false returning:
a bat dives through bending wheat,
then rises and disappears into a scar of trees;
geese stomp like colorless clowns
through muddy rodeo grounds;
ice gives back the blue bicycle
tossed into last year’s river, tires missing
as if it’s not enough to be sinking otherwise whole.
The azaleas, this year without leaves,
are all lip and bone.
Feminine of azaleos, the word
means dry.
Old lore says to plant beans
during a waxing moon.
But first sit naked
in the garden at night.
If you sink or for a minute settle,
almost sprout, it’s time to plant.
So I go naked beneath my plaid robe
and bend to sniff the soil.
The azaleas urge: toe the mulch,
unbutton your knees and squat.
After five months of winter, to be alone
with such possibility.
I’ve kept it too long
in a colander balanced against
a banana curve of joy,
afraid to taste its skin
and reach a stone even rain can’t dissolve
into a scatter of moons,
afraid it holds no seed of mercy
to be placed in my mouth
when I’m buried, no means
to reclaim grace like Adam whose tongue shot forth
from seeds of the forbidden fruit
a cypress, a cedar, an olive,
afraid I no longer believe
the last thing rooting in my mouth should be
a tree thirsting for tears.
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