As I drive by
the architect’s
house, his wife’s

just opening up
the sideyard window
and leaning out

on her elbows to
talk with three
backyard sheep.

She smells spring.
Given sun trying
to break through

dawn fog, fog after
all-night rain, on
top of two months

of old snow, she
gives herself
gasps of light.

Not a mile back,
just beyond Harman’s
Farm Stand, all

boarded-up against
winter, almost at
the new place where

they sell Russian
tractors, I sniffed
skunk, first time

this year. Had to
swerve my pickup
to keep from side-

swiping the skunk,
already dead. And
next to him, for

Christ’s sake, a big
mother porcupine,
dying hard.

I kept on driving
to work. I keep
on now, holiday

or no, my whole
morning messed up
by road-kill, wannabe

Presidents, street
bombs, cyberspace,
Bosnia, and what’s to

become of the former
United States, an
America only once

divisible. Half-
blinded by freeflow
tears and new sun,

I find myself
still touched by
the woman talking

with sheep. I try
to figure what they
say to each other;

and when, if spring
happens, the new
lambs will come.