Matins for the Last Frost
Patient in their dark hibernacle wait the twinned lobes of the tulip bulb hanging like a semicolon in the endless sentence of winter; not yet the green shaft rips the paper tunic in its upward thrust, not yet knifes its tip through the topsoil, the stalk aspiring up to a swelling of petals, pale bud pursed and then loosened, deepening to red and unsealing itself sash by sash, a leggy dishabille in lipstick. Somewhere on the other side of town some bells begin to raise their brazen; everything is about to change—