Snowdrops

Spring comes forward as a late-winter confection, and I cannot decide if it advances a philosophy of meekness or daring.

This year’s snowdrops: is it that they are spare, and have a slightly fraught lucidity, or are they proof that pain, too, can be ornate?

Even a propped skull is human nature. And its humor is monstrous, rich with an existence that owes nothing to anyone.

Fat little pearls against the ice, battering softly, try even fewer qualities—

To say that you love someone or something to death is to hover around the draw of irrevocability.

More faith is asked of us, a trained imagination against the ice-white.

“Snowdrops” is from The Wilderness (W.W. Norton, 2014).