Seasons
by Emma McLarin
A crow watches from the blackened oak
while pale blossoms drift like ashes.
The air is warm with new life,
yet carries the faint scent of endings-
sweet, heavy, inevitable.
For infancy is no mercy.
It is the quiet hand of decay,
tending its garden of bones
until flowers rise again
from all that has fallen.
From the bones of puddles,
of crystal and broken shard,
from the remnants of roots
where frozen agony once lived.
Worms writhe softly,
drinking in the April rain-
drowning, dying,
as their forebears once dried.
Descend from your oak,
dear feathered friend,
for with each breath of new life
comes the hush of new death.
