Something in the Wind

When Hope came by, she came
from fingers of the apple-blossomed

breeze. I was tending new flowers, hoping for overflowing
petals. She wore a lemon-yellow dress-

stained with raspberries huddled
in the pouch of her upturned skirt.

With ruby-skinned fingers, she pushed
a nippled berry into my mouth,

smiled and whispered into the fruit
of my ear; her reddened tongue!

"Darling, soon it will all be like this,"
and when she left, like the spring bubbling up

from my irrigation well, sunflower sprouts
peeked out with twin-leaved tendrils,

up from the grave of our slumbering garden.