Lenten Sonnet #27

Poem

In the upstairs window, all is green.

Now the pecan tree wears the palest mist

Against the laurel’s dark all-season sheen,

A weather of buds, each like an infant fist

Repeated infinitely, or so it looks

From this desk where, cheek nested in your hand,

You look up from the winter of your books

As if some voice had named you just now and

Set you among the almost-flowering things

Which form your view of a veiled and greening sky --

No page but leaves, those infinite unfurlings.

No life but that green rising from the dead.

No story but the most familiar mystery,

Everywhere, in the wet vein of the wood.