At a Rest Stop in McGuireville, AZ

The desert here smells clean
like air scrubbed  with sage.
The desert here smells sweet
like citrus blooms that fill your dreams.
The air here smells fresh
like a western rain after noon's heat.
The desert here smells like memory
of a station wagon filled with my
brothers and my parents and me
passing this way on moonlit journeys
when all of us were young.

If You Stayed in Bed This Morning . . .

This is what you missed:
A watercolor sky, washed with pink
The air thick with pear blossom scent
A coffee klatch of sparrows, planning their day
The feel of a road beneath your feet
A fleeting taste of spring

Reinvention

And now the ground that was
flat and bare brown is a green
quilt of thready stems--
lily of the valley shoots
twist and uncurl upward,
reinventing the garden
with each morning that passes.

In My Backyard

The yellow sumac--I planted
in memory of Marilyn,
whose backyard was filled
with sumac she treated like family.

The snowball bush--I planted
in memory of Becky,
who believed its flowers in coffee cans
were the only acceptable offering on Memorial Day.

The butterfly bush--I planted
in memory of my father and our trip
to Normandy's graves when the shrub's long purple
blooms were in honey-fragrant season.

The lilac bush--I planted
for myself in memory of all
the Anns I have been and will be when
another April rolls down the mountain.

April Moon

A full April moon
is the Pink Moon
is the Sprouting Grass Moon
is the Egg Moon
is the Fish Moon
is the moon that rode low
over my street in the
dark of this morning
and made me marvel

Excess

I understand the biology behind Spring--
The green sheen of the male mallard
Attracts the female and so life goes on and on and on

But is so much excess strictly necessary?
The giddy chatter of robins?
The scent of a sun-warmed hyacinth?
That glistening goblet of a yellow tulip there?

Seriously, I can almost hear the gods say
Well! As long as we're at it,
Why don't we put on a real show!

Things I Thought Would Last Forever

My knees
Stratton's fruit stand on Orem's 8th North
The volunteer orange poppy in our backyard
My crush on the British royal family
The Hawthorne tree my parents planted
The restaurant where my parents ate Italian sausage sandwiches
My great-grandmother's house on the shore of Bear Lake
My kids living nearby
My dad's voice on the other end of the telephone line
Notre Dame