the tendency of determination and other misnomers

you had your own language
as winter trees do, all naked limbed and bared teeth;
face in a chattering wind

did you know then, the smell of vicks
would send you now, down snow-filled roads, long shoveled drives

and onto the wings of the chickadee, your head nooked
in a tiny wind-raised tuft of black down

you were small
and imagined things greater, perhaps

the toad and snake were better prepared than you
buried deep beneath mud and leaf, preferable, i suppose
to frozen blood or the trudge of heavy feet

and i wonder, what of the morel; a thin gray species, grown delicate in perfect
circles, gathering strength in dormancy

and then what too, of your mother's purple iris,
and clumped jonquil resting deep in the ditch - will they bloom beautiful still,
even when you are no longer there to love them?













m