dust, breath, light.

butterfly resting on old leaves, the river valley, april 19/09

pysanka gave to my mother this easter

willow sunday

bud' vysokyj yak verba, zdorovyj yak voda, i bahatyj yak zemlya.
(be as tall as a willow, as healthy as water, and as rich as the earth.)

spring melt vanishes the skins
of things, show their spines plainly,
delicate skeletons bare & shocked:

barbed wire stars of burrs
& asters, stalks of sleeping parsnip
& the bleached tendrils of grasses,

snowy epithelia peeled back
to show us the bright arteries, willow
capillaries that will feed the new

lightning shoots sprouting fresh off
last year’s bones: layers of earth
reassemble, regather the flesh

of our ancestors, transform these
new spring clothes: old woman, her
silver hair turned to green rivergrass

& arms woven with bright birch
leaves; little bird cracking a shell
of ancient bones, flying up with

egg-slick feathers, wearing waxy
new plumage made from her passed
life’s worth of that same water

& dust & breath & light.