This winter sunshine loosens time.
I shut my eyes and let it be
the park, the boy from nursery school.
Inside the earth our fingers dig
where earth is chill and all around
the sun soaks through our woolen coats
and on our mud-slick hands. We are
the smell of mud and sun and worms.
Impatiently we pull them up
to curl the air and whip the ground
and crisp our upturned palms. When they
twist back inside the dark, the sun
rolls down and with it fifty years
contract and stiffen, stern as bone.

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