Spring West of Town

A man who lives inside my head
Like a winter field in winter is dead.

Like fruit forgot on a windowsill
He shrinks in the cold and dark until

Comes widening from his winter cup
The sun who licks the shadows up.

And feathered clamors wake the hush
As spring comes on him with a rush.

As though he slept a month too late
He’s now the man who cannot wait.

He is the man whose flesh is burned
With imaged furrows yet unturned.

He plants his corn and beans in rows
And hurries everywhere he goes.

If muscles ache from too much strain
He puts them all to work again.

Time is the only weight he feels
For spring has caught him by the heels.

He rolls an orbit like the sun
But who will be the soonest done?

Who will as still as his fields lie
While the brave sun still walks the sky?

He drops his life along a row
As though the years were seeds to sow.

And the faith that lives to keep
Will see him safe to bed and sleep.