“What is green in me / darkens, muscadine...”
— Denise Levertov
A man-in-motion cloud plays like a foot-
ball game above the yard-turned-barber shop
where February’s thaw shaves limbs so close
that vines the snowfall bulked up into dreds
wake shoe-lace thin, and shrubs made into domes
of snowy antlers, heaped and velveted,
trim back to twigs. The barber takes some off
the top, like memory does, and those clipped locks,
forgotten, fall in layers over time
to leafy stacks of well-thumbed magazines.
When he combed through the snow today he teased
this long-lost phrase out from my graying roots
then swept the floor and turned the Open! sign
to Closed! As if one youth could be enough.
Printed from Cerise Press: http://www.cerisepress.com
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