Spring is

The ideogram for sorrow is called Autumn Heart,
but Spring is the season that aches:

green shoots tender as newborns wearing their caps
of dirt crumbs crocheted with snow,

brave crocuses stiff-glistered with frost, and on the cold shore,
oyster spat—each grain a tiny sealed urn

holding a life—left sifted in drifts by the tide. Dante’s squalls
of sere, fallen leaves exist only in equipoise

with this surging urge of the dead being born, and here,
the characters agree: The symbol for Spring is

layered, the brushstrokes for wither and coffin still faintly there
beneath those for horizon, day, sky, leaf, and tree.