Onward to May.

Overgrown haiku for the last night in April

Tonight the tree shapes green at last.
A plane spikes through a pinkening cloud.
Stone walls cast back the day’s late heat.
A bird swifts over the glowing blue,
and I cannot rest for looking.

Were I to shake this blossomed branch,
petals could fall over my arms and catch
in my hair, and I could be beloved of a poet,
could be one of those whorled women upswept
and unaware of how her strayness wounds,
how these bits of spring snow burn before
they fall to ground, all but the piece that stays.

I keep myself by knowing exactly what I know:
April’s last sunset shadows the fat leaves.
The grass sends up a scent of new mowing.
Were I to reach under this cloudied moon
to touch the dusking tree, I alone would be there.