Covid Spring, Anon

Even birds that sleep in the wind sense it,
days without giddy-up, ripe March feel, and we,
fearfully, biblically, made, endure, one more
clenched-teeth desert-hot year, lie-low brute,
fowl, human time under rough spruce stump,
bristlecone pine, pinched into hedgerow rift,
cotillion, prom-pink hedgehog cacti bulge,
blood boiling, heart pumping, dreamers’ eyes,
alien, silent, sly, peeled along the shadow line
where neither bloom nor love nor guilt nor grace,
full marks for art or vision, endure, l’heure bleue
lantana seasoning dank absolute night, stars redeeming,
unmaking light the way the beautiful die, carefully,
quietly, blindly, behind mask & glove, brush & thicket, —
gone before dawn.