Spring Festival: another quest for gold, 

another little perfection. Years of living 

in homes built on rosary beads tied up 

by every promise, any dream the weight 

of miracle could crush under the weight 

of its cradle, each of them a gift of skin, 

a rose taken from its stem. This spring, 

all eyes are dialed up ringing the new year, 

the litany of texts and calls where friends 

met and old fears strung through limbs 

like spider silk, short and fine. This spring, 

longing for a return to the familiar, 

anything new might draw a nightmare. 

Mothers no longer need to ask what’s 

wrong, where the rings and promise 

buntings are, no longer need to move 

their lips when the years are nothing 

more than steps into a shadow. The River 

holds strands of yellow crocuses, petals 

tucked inside blossoms expecting rain, 

the beckoning scent of sugar maple sap 

and river stones to thread the air with its 

promise of soon. This spring, Mama told 

me of her earliest memory: fields of dogs, 

and how the sky could taste like miso soup. 

She remembered the moonlit smell, the air 

felt so loose, with pears still cooking down 

and the propane bottles bellowing. Cold air 

and the sterile flicker of the streetlamps. 

Hunger can do in the meatless months 

when all the wallflower kids were driven 

outside by heat. And so came The Canine 

Eruption of January, those doglike kids 

with their elbows out, flinging ragged hair,

hotdog breathe, and teenage smog, all eyes 

poised to drench the street in minted glory, 

in the way that's always been in this tiny town

where women trade secrets like eye shadow 

and aprons and knit gloves, this yearly cleaning

with gold bangles and an unplanned legacy.