In this quiet world
the trees will survive. 
yellow adirondack chairs
face the sun 
turning as our orbit
moves us through another day. 
morning - afternoon - the night; 
when the quiet is unsettling and 
nothing masks what we dread.
in the morning,
on this cold spring day,
the warm sweet smell of hot cereal-
needed before the house warms
before the day tries, then fails.
Snowdrops, finding reason enough to bloom
are greeted as some magnificence
that makes us want to kneel
and put our cheek to the cold soil.
the trees are softening-
sap in their veins.
water is trickling through the culverts-
following a course hard beneath my feet.
in the sun, I stop to listen.
a man whose large white dog
ignores me stops to talk.
already we are intimate friends, 
in our loneliness, our fear.
with our faces turned to the sun
we have things to talk about. 
he tells me a bit of good news
that in these unrelenting days
blooms in me as a rite.
                        

there’s a darkness at the door
the light of the day cannot get past.
inside the secrets come out
from behind the good dishes,
the sugar in the pantry
the stack of books by the bed.
in the drawers of folded clothes
we open in the morning-
the fears mist into the air. 
there was a wind all night 
that banged the gate—
almost keeping the silence away.
we all stand by, out of the way-
in some brooding orbit
as spring creeps past us. 
the days are longer—
the mornings pink- so welcomed.
simple things that still belong; 
breathing, planning, remembering—
the stealth outside our door.