Mortification (2) Poem by Lisa Russ Spaar

Glazier season, thin ice,
lens annulling clavate buds,

rescinding crocus silks,
making me see time,

forcing me to listen
to what I would not hear:

his betrayals in a ticking claque
of indifferent weeds.

So too my own body,
ovarian branch in curfew of snow.

I might not have known myself,
arrested in the hard light

of such information,
but for my two hands,

templed in yours, sorrow
blooming there, slender at first,

but allowed, and opening
to this reprisal:

the garden, yes, of course,
but also to grief, its velvet force

moving us through us,
fluent & beyond