EARLY SPRING THAW
Today I am made of water, touch my shoulder and I leak,
my belly a lake, my bones an open river flowing toward
sea, all this salt in me, who would have thought,
dissolving into flesh, tears, an open wound, rubbed raw.
The wind of February sweeps the air clean, the sky with
its fugitive clouds, its murky definitions, vaguely white,
soon the clear pale lemon yellow fading into dark rose
and then blue black, the night, with its cold sparkle, its
spectacular consolation.
And me in early spring thaw, gasping for new air,
imagine, in all this snow, melting.
—from Rattle #18, Winter 2002
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Di Brandt: “I spend my winters in a university and factory town in Ontario, Canada, and my summers in the wild-minded Manitoba prairie, where I was born and raised, where my heart is, and where my poems come from.”
