False Spring by Robert Demaree

Flowering fruit trees, cherries and pears,
After a false spring and late March frost:
Blossoms a dingy pink and white
Against a cold sky the color of dishwater
And woods still gray with winter.
I pass an abandoned convenience store,
With plywood windows like bandaged eyes,
Its solitary pump a sentinel
By the side of the road,
A sign, among many, of things,
Like some people’s marriages,
Which had offered promise
But didn’t work out.





Robert Demaree, NH, USA