What spring flowers that’d peeked
are now hiding from the cold,
in the yard at least.

There are still prevalent patches of lamb’s quarters. 
And one rain-chewn dandelion. 

Two rain-chewn dandelions. 

Pale and glaucous, sage-green buds are flecking the assuméd honeysuckle. 

Rust red stalks curl and rattle by the abandoned amateur apiary. 

And clovers slowly sweeping the tawnier patches
where the grass had molted, 
suffusing a gripping green across the lawn

A hunched and denim-swaddled jew
furrows and jitters behind a slithering strand of sallowed azure smoke, 
literally crepitating with worry for her other half

some tens of thousands paces westward

she nurses a cup
adorned with a bunny reared and smirking among some vernal flowers

if only she could don those ears
and whimsically mince through the english damp
perchance she’d cheer her darling up

and not sleave long chains of sallowed butts
for a tubby Tanuki to weigh,
assess, appraise, and, by this, 
levy a gleeful twist
to this sapping and griseous english damp—

yet she’s cream for all the coffee quaffed
and a chatty, contortionist cat to scoff at her,
bacon filling a sturdy trough
and whimsied with hope that her darling return to her;

whimsied hope that she may brave
the desert winds and darting sand
and further hope that she can raise
her mother as a kid again
to gambol, skip, guffaw, and brave
such voices raised and pointing hands
that plague her still, 
the past appraised,
arraigned,
and 
chipperly
pardoned