I. Not Because of Spring

You say there were blossoms everywhere but not because of Spring.

Some kind of emotional eclipse in the dead-middle of winter.

You said the perfume burned like incense in your heart.

You were alone in the forest and it smelled of chimney and soot.

The rotting Katsura leaves this autumn smell like fermenting plums.

They litter the ground like gold coins but bruised a brown-violet.

A blossoming, but not because of Spring.

Your heart stays steady on its course as you make your way

through the dense stand of Douglas Firs. The smoke is rising in the distance

and you long for warmth and the longing warms you.

There is a certain way that young Hemlocks touch me, imprint me,

in a way that only Hemlocks can.

Did I tell you about the time Rhoda and I sat in a small café in Evoramonte,

drinking coffee, and longing to be in Evoramonte drinking coffee?

What is that uniquely Swedish term, untranslatable, for coziness?

To come upon your fire-lit cabin after trekking for miles in snow.

Or was it suadade, the Portuguese term we cannot grasp.

Some kind of nostalgia for something that never even happened.

It is not because of Spring that the scent and bruise of blossoms appear.

Rather, through death and lack and loss I sense your deep need for the

mother-milk of longing to nourish you back to:  

Close, but not quite;

Opening, but not fully;

Grasping, but not holding.

I long for the forest and the forest is my longing.