March Poem

Here,
On the cusp of spring,
Everything feels
Like the gleaming skin of liquid tension
On the very rim of the brimful cup,
Or the curl of the slowly mounting breaker
Looming over the sea-green swell
And the scrolling undertow.

Everything feels
Like the quiver of the kestrel hanging on the wind,
Fixing with its focus the scurrying prey,
Or the sheen and the tremor of the thoroughbred,
Tautly awaiting, at the limits of restraint,
The snap of the starting gun.

Everything feels
Like the yearning stretch of inflated lungs
Sated to the depth with indrawn breath.

Here,
On the cusp of spring,
And here, in eternity’s borderlands,
Everything feels
Like the single, liminal instant
Before…

The riotous gush of overflow,
The tumbling welter of plummeting foam,
The exhilaration of the skewering dive,
The surge and the spurt of the thundering race,
And the trembling sigh of exhalation,
Expelling all of the bleakness and hopelessness,
The greyness and gloom,
And the slow-killing chill
Of the long
Lingering
Winter.