April Begins

by Alice Feeley, RDC

and they still hang on with no life left,

these wide maple leaves gone brown,

turned in on themselves

like crumpled paper.

Unmoved by winter

they still shudder on thin stems

above soft ground

where other leaves

are turning into earth again.

A few yards away a gold sign

blows against a telephone pole.

“On Sunday,” it says

“we will be selling our home

to the highest bidder.”

And across the bare landscape

a magnolia teases thirty degree night air

with dense buds ready and rosy pink.