"Revival" by Luci Shaw

"Early Spring" Ivan Zolotuhin

March. I am beginning

to anticipate a thaw. Early mornings

the earth, old unbeliever, is still crusted with frost

where the moles have nosed up their

cold castings, and the ground cover

in shadow under the cedars hasn’t softened

for months, fogs layering their slow, complicated ice

around foliage and stem

night by night,

but as the light lengthens, preacher

of good news, evangelizing leaves and branches,

his large gestures beckon green

out of gray. Pinpricks of coral bursting

from the cotoneasters. A single bee

finding the white heather. Eager lemon-yellow

aconites glowing, low to the ground like

little uplifted faces. A crocus shooting up

a purple hand here, there, as I stand

on my doorstep, my own face drinking in heat

and light like a bud welcoming resurrection,

and my hand up, too, ready to sign on

for conversion.

"Revival" by Luci Shaw from What the Light Was Like. © Word Farm, 2006.