Here in an angle of the wall this April day
I’m waiting for each dawdling cloud to shift with the wind
and let the young year’s sun get to work on clay
housed in three pullovers but still thin-skinned.

Leaf-making, precocious last month, is on hold
and the blossom is over-committed, perhaps,
with the ground ungiving and the air cold
though the sunshine is forceful in the clouds’ gaps.

So it goes, back and forth, the season’s trial of strength
whose timing is doubtful but whose outcome is known.
Spring lurches on unevenly as days increase in length
and hope, in spite of evidence, is bred in the bone.