By James Cushing

This scrap of bright blue paper with your

hasty note and art keeps aloft the kite

of a moment that has joined its sisters in the woods.

Yes, despite lengthening days, the air feels cold

and the wind speaks of something gone away

I’m trying to read the 2-point type on a map

to the place I live.  The trout lore my

father left me rests in a wooden trunk,

and I’m making up for the golden-purple

swirl dying at the edge of the ocean

by whispering my chronology out loud.  But

each time I hear a woodwind, I think of wood

and the forests wood grows in, and the sounds winter branches

make in their shadowy, late-night brooding: “Over here!

Something beautiful is being born!  Come veil it!”