Love Poem on the Second Day of Spring

The terrible waste of war goes on, it's Good Friday, that darkest day, and some parts of Michigan might be getting a foot of snow. Yet this poem, from the vernal equinox four years ago, still applies. Here's to love embattling darkness.


for Ted

Cruel worlds conspire
against my need for
ease this gloomy day, deaths
piling up on hectoring news,
a frozen rocky orb found circling
the sun beyond Pluto.
We are pecked by circumstance
beyond control; as I write this,
sleety rain swoops down
on struggling tulips, mid-morning
light curtained almost to night. Street
lights blink on again as if winter
decided not to go. In the chilly dark
my day dips down
toward deductions, floods and
rumors of more war. Yet love, you are
the daffodil blooming in snow. You
are my real spring, my lion roaring
against the universe.