Jane Zwart
Death in the Springtime

Recall the snow, and the rot begins.

        A lobe of orange, pale lunchmeat
        in plastic. The tomato we did not pick.
                It turned into a crumpled polyp.
                It hung from the vine like a bauble.

        The flicker that struck our window.
                Its beak was lead, its neck's scruff painted.
                My grief was neither abstract nor acute

                        because how else could I have taken so long
                        taking in the ruffs of yellow and red
                pomaded to that bird's nape, the dull bead
                cupped in a socket, the legs
                with the slack of waxed strings

                and because how else except borne
                on a child-sized shovel
                could I ever have exacted its weight?

<< return to the Table of Contents for New Series #6: Winter 2018, Volume 3 Number 2