So Poem by Lisa Russ Spaar

Latitudinal, agonized, this wonder
of shadow on gravestones

plagiarizing willows, hemlock,
tear-strung and haunted. Lover,

winter could not be smaller
in this archive, lawn bee-hung

and alive with flight
lost to suck, to sweet -

to such towering atlases
of azalea and dogwood,

before which, your hand, there -
& why ever leave, why hide,

& why not sing now,
though for so long not,

or, like the wind, insist on a place
for myself in this world?