I hear the coo of a mourning dove,
swaying as a porch swing does 
in the breeze by itself,
and I remember this time last year.
Spring was coming, 
but we didn’t predict 
the total eclipse.

I want to hug the person I was, 
scared and so lost.
To mother the child
when a bosomy clasp 
in a rocking chair
could still ease the pain.

In late February, 
crystalline light outlines 
the cypress fronds, 
shards of ice lose their edge, 
green points push 
out of the brown, 
and I want to run outside 
like a child 
who sees a friend at the door.

Dare I trust spring again?
The vaccine is here, but 
three thousand died every day
last month. 
In Los Angeles, funeral homes
rent refrigerated trucks 
to hold all the bodies,
and in Maryland, graves 
can’t be dug fast enough 
with shovels and backhoes,
so they must lay dynamite.

Conspiracies keep felling minds,
and the virus keeps morphing 
into new mutations
in South Africa, Britain, and Brazil.

The song of the mourning dove
swaying up, up and then down
seems to tell me,
Cry for all we have endured, 
for how strong you’ve been.

Let the knots unloose,
the rain soak into you.
Let the ice thaw, and
the sun light up 
every one of your fronds.

Allow the wind to decide 
what branches need to fall
and which can still point to the sky.

Plant your feet deep in the ground,
and let every tendril take up 
the fertile funeral of last year’s loss.

Like the rain that has seen tragedies 
and majesties that you will never know,
you too must return.

Those choirs of geese 
making giant arrows in the sky,
those woodpeckers drumming,
these snowdrops blooming —
they are here to lead you out.

Receive, let go, fly.
This is what it feels like to be alive.