Let us talk about doorways and other things

And windows too

Spring leaps at us with ferocity

in spite of the crude discipline of death

You only have to open your window

to know that you are Spring and you are defiant

You are incalculable

You are in love at and with nothing

and you are enraged

You

Lash out

No longer straight-jacketed by winter

And hold a candle to earth

Illuminating for a brief moment her darkness

To shout in bird song

“We are still alive”

Let us talk about doorways and other things

And windows too

I and you both live to bask in the sun’s warmth

and caress the wet oak saplings from our window

Watching our huskies pant impatiently

at the threshold of open doors

Embrace your impatience

You are Spring

It lives within you

It cries out for you to see it

Before you are engulfed in the humid heat

And oppressive weight of the hiss of cicadas

And stray flies

and stormclouds of mosquitoes and hurricanes

And love bugs—

Do you know love bugs? You probably don’t.

They are like your Europeans’ mayflies:

They hatch and mate and die in a day

I often think about how flies measure time.

When I was a boy

I used to get the ‘go feeling’

It is a feeling I cannot describe

It wasn’t happiness

It was bigger and different

More pure

It encompassed the room

It was the present and the future and the

Slow, coy and humid wonder of Louisiana childhood

Waddling around in an early September sunset

In a cloud of lovebugs