Light and Stairs

Thin are the threads of color over splashed

green, the spring messengers roam, and the

crocus eyes blink purple into the day.

The last snow at crossroads: distress in ice beneath

suns in the thoughts of hopeful sheep.

In the moment, the clouds rarely shatter the light – then,

sometimes rain, when the meadows shyly ask their questions

and a name.

A name on the tongue. On the tongue of a

boy, who frees himself from the cold steel of winter.

Striped beds in the bedroom, no

whimpering gasp through the window, just

zebra-pattern grain before the moment

of bare feet on the carpet.

A lamb still to become in the slow

breaking of sparkling skin / to awaken to

fields of light.

One stretches ears across the land. To listen to the

clinking of cups, the chirping branches, the

warm springing.

One speaks softer, laughing a little about politics

before the hotel’s wall, rooted entirely in

dandelion.

And in the living room, the Jacob’s ladder:

of constant drive, to rise there,

enveloped in great fatigue.