The Bird

One day in the bleak month of March
while the ice crackled underfoot,
I held her in my arms under a thin arch
of honeysuckle branches rimmed with frost
and when I kissed her I looked up
and there a bird, a robin, one of the first,
watched us as the wind puffed out its breast
red with sunset like a berry ready to burst.
Since then years have tumbled into the abyss
and many roads have known my feet,
I’ve never returned to that place again in spring.
I have forgotten her, if you should ask I would say,
I have forgotten and it would be the truth.
Her face somehow escapes me and the kiss
is all I can recall where the honeysuckles
are doubtless dead by the time I remember this.
Even the kiss I’m sure I wouldn’t remember
except for the robin resting himself there—
it was years ago but it fluffed out its feathers
and the low light drifted in from the west
and for a moment it seemed to glow like fire.
March still comes with threats of spring, I suppose,
the girl has probably married and raised her kids,
the bird burned there in the sun and then took wing.