by Elsa Johnson

Look   …here are the marks of hooves and a spot

of blood on the packed snow   He’s come   It is

that coldest time before the tide of spring

sweeps in :  time of the green night   that swells

the buds of the redbud tree   the shadblow

and the maple    In the backyard late last

fall I cut spent heads off hydrangeas — 

they stood all winter in this amputated state   

Yesterday I saw in passing   below the

truncated stems   swollen buds :  that green

devil pushing that thick fluid through the tube

Morning  —  pale moon gone from the platinum

sky —  the birds erupt in pagan chorus

There is no no that force knows