Spring Snow

Spring snow is falling on the Lackawanna:
flakes like butterflies that fail to land.
The river is a thick black tongue tonight,
wet-leathery and dumb.
I listen like a fool
to what cannot or won't be said.
I'm old or young, I can't quite tell.
This bygone winter was a kind of hell,
but now it's over. I can dream
of daffodils like women in their yellow dresses.
I would love to suck their long green stems
and twirl a finger in their tresses.
Just below me, I can feel
the trembling roots and tubers,
suck and cipher in the sudden swell.
And something in the air's alive again.
The ice-floes shelve and break
along the shoreline's smudge of pain.
T lean into the shadows, come what may.
Even the stones melt fast around me
as the ground gives way.