in memoriam D.S.
The snowdrops round the treetrunk in her yard
the last day of the first month of the year
eye-white, drooped as if ashamed
to flourish so relentlessly
their unrefusable profusion caught
in my throat as this poem did, for months
imitating the secrets of the brown earth
this burying, emerging, closing
this double or triple seeing, massed slow-fast
perenniality, each “solitary,
pendulous bell-shaped flower, held
on a slender pedicil”
as we maneuvered up the steps
to the grieving door
