outside doing something else I turn and see them
snowdrops thrusting through dead leaves beside a snowdrift
I drop everything, pick up a rake, clear their bed
the garden, an infant crowning from winter’s womb
labor intensive tenderness for this newborn
and then again in the dying time next autumn
in summer, weeding, making way for bloom and fruit
watering, watching as the whole green world matures
but now it is the end of the bare time, bone time
the end of resting inside or questing over crusty snow
to learn the secrets of hollow and rise, the ways
of water and stone, the groan of bare trees and ice
how I am pulled again into the seasons’ round
even as my own time winds down or up or both
is their wisdom in waning? I still want to dance
Elizabeth, your body spirals with the wind
watch the oak, learn to keep a wilder deeper time
look: daffoldil shoots rising between ancient roots
Note: I have been experimenting with the ghazal form since meeting poet JK McDowell and reading his collection Night Mystery Light. My primitive understanding is that the form has lines of 12 syllables, stanzas of three lines which must stand alone as a poem, and six stanzas total. There may be other rules of which I am not aware.