After reading too long about the pandemic...

            I go out to see what the frost has spared,
            here late in May.

            The seedlings I covered with an old T-shirt
            and the new dogwood

            I slipped into a pillowcase look stunned, but ok.
            The peonies, however,

            break off in my hand like snapped asparagus.
            The tender leaves

            on the Chinese maple hang limp, but the oak
            must have some antifreeze

            against such things; its catkins tangle in my hair.
            I stretch to see a nest tucked

            under the eaves where a mother robin sat all night,
            tight as a pot on a stove.

            But today, four blue eggs, the color of heaven, lie
            abandoned in the cold.

            Soon I will check on the bluebird house, where
            a family of sparrows moved in

            two weeks ago. I didn't have the heart to evict them,
            to wait for tardy bluebirds.

            Now I am glad to see the little squatters are thriving,
            small mouths opening, hungry

            for whatever Spring has to offer, and for any face
            that appears at their door.

Cathryn Essinger is the author of five books of poetry--most recently The Apricot and the Moon and Wings, or Does the Caterpillar Dream of Flight?, both from Dos Madres Press. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, The New England Review, The Antioch Review, Rattle, Ecotone, Terrain and other journals. They have been nominated for Pushcarts and Best of the Net, featured on The Writer's Almanac, and reprinted in American Life in Poetry. She was Ohio's Poet of the Year in 2005. She lives in Troy, Ohio where she raises Monarch butterflies and tries to live up to her dog’s expectations.

Published July 15 2023