The wind jangles dogwood petals down like mottled rain, and you are
unimpressed. Aim your treacle eyes akimbo at passersby and taunt a
sticky swim in your malaise. Sure, you could ride the April dither like a
feather. You get down with the bumbeat grackles that treep treep their
trill musings up the branches, and you scurry sunlit alleys as well as any
streetrat but not this day. This day, you have drank the world grey. Smelt
it sour as your own milky fur. You have bid the latch on all your secrets:
rust shut! No patience for wonders of where the pigeons nest their young
or what colors this year’s pansies peacock. Solicitors, inquisitors, forlorn
birders—do not bother this squirrel today! Gone fishing! With your
snout scoping waves, in dirt as warm as a cookie sheet, until your paws
hook your divine:

a charm misplaced in 
winter’s stupor. Now, let spring
beat its wings again.