Spring Stew

The spring lavenders have melted away
and I have learned to quietly, gently
rock in their absence, and their holes
have filled with murder browns and
coward greens, but my scolded child
stance protects me from melting away, too.

I hasten and concentrate on my youth,
I am bound like plumb clouds to an angry storm
or vintage reflections to a dying mirror
to my age, but winter tears at the draining sun,
holocausting through rabbits and lilies
to create such bitter gray men
with well-hollow hearts dregged with feting,
frosted blood; such solid, cold, frozen
blood that it should never melt!

But, impossibly, all men melt and swirl and mix
and cauldron back into spring beginnings
with yellow chicken births. The cracks of pearl
seeds bore on to more melting, now of yoke,
but my twittering seat has saved me
from the molting before, and I sit vilified
with my foolhardy gestures, my gibberish
back in vogue with the suitors,
and feeling so small and unstructured
that growing is no longer maturing,
is no longer a nightmare,
is no longer a concern.

And that hidden, bitter refuse
dines with the snakes and putrid reptiles,
waiting to pounce and thrash again,
waiting to reconquer,
forgetting that it too will melt
and boil in this lavender stew.