By Wendy BooydeGraaff

Robins spend months

harvesting crab apples. Didn’t

they used to migrate? In February,

they think it’s spring. Instead of Noah’s

flood, hot centers of continents

dry up while coasts collapse

under oceans, floating marsh

barges bump up against each other

like amusement rides. Clouds blew

away again this morning, the haze of rain

blurring into the horizon. I like sowing

seeds among the rocks, see what tiny life

can work itself up between the crevasses.

Last year nothing took

but a few weeds. This year, patchy

sedum, three milkweed, a perennial hibiscus

blooming full-on pink for four days, two

four-inch crab trees planted by birds or

wind, and an ornamental grass that sends

up fluffy flags not quite white but still, we know

it’s a call for truce.

Wendy BooydeGraaff’s poems have appeared in Afterimages, The Elevation Review, Litmosphere, and Novus Literary Arts Journal, and are anthologized in Under Her Eye (Blackspot Books), Not Very Quiet (Recent Works Press), andMidwest Futures: Poems & Micro-Stories from Tomorrow's Heartland (Middle West Press).