poem

Paula Bohince Pussy Willow

Faint as flame-in-wind,

I was born, cupped inside a fist

and carried everywhere,

even to the formidable river

so I might see the stones

of the riverbed.

Now pussy willow,

hacked and bundled

by gloved hands for hours

beside that river,

is all I remember

of childhood.

How branches scraped past

my window like antlers,

half-cleaned of velvet.

Of illness,

true antlers bent

against a snow-ridden field.

By candlelight, pussy willow

has returned, unaltered

to a city hardly real.

Virus in my heart. Branches

salted with buds, soft-

eyed on a sill.