City of the Lost Spring

Candytuft against a picket fence.

I planted it there,

a sprig of a thing, fifty cents of a chance

that April would return

and the sun would warm the fence

you painted in August’s heat.

 

Like white coins, these flowers

where I walk through the gate, alone,

my ears tuned to the words

of one more Holocaust novel,

all despair thrown up against what

spring would want me to forget.

 

What I had forgotten was spring itself,

some faith that it would return

after you had gone.

I looked for you in the odd places —

the tool shed behind muddy rakes,

a corner of the shed where I stored seeds.

 

Loss is like that, fooling recollection —

where you last set a spade

before turning to another task,

or the combination to a lock

you thought you knew by heart.

It had always opened the door.

 

Now this two o’clock sun

on an April day calls out

White on white –

the candytuft,

the whitewashed fence.

I close winter’s gate behind me.