Halfling Spring First winter sober was never so bitter or long, so achingly bright. This woman who is wife was never so far or fair, so sharp in the eye of desire, her ambivalent touches scraping on the raw. This poking daughter talking, clinging, running to and away. Weeks past the equinox, spring starts each day to stall by evening, the house's moat of melt refreezing as new snow paints out the day's insufficiency. New life bides in seed, waiting for warmth, will not hurry for worry or care or prayer. It makes no haste to show what snow keeps hidden, the roses pith-stricken, bones of birds, the salt-poisoned turf. When buds stagger up at last, pale moths reeling free of the chloroform bottle's bottom, what husbandry this bed will need to blossom. © Dale R. Hobson. All rights reserved.