Counting Spring

A woodpecker taps the telephone pole in the backyard.
Doves don’t startle from the wire. The gray sky
balances frippery of spring, bobbing tulip heads,
little pink cups of air drowning
                                                                         waxen tongues,
blades of irises sheathing lobbed buds, little birds.
Every bird is singular, sparrow and finch. I do not
count them. I forget that flash
                                                                     in the window, new, winged,
hearted, bright smudge of a heart beating fast as molecules.
The last cat my mother will love hid in her crate, ignored
her food. My mother coaxed
                                                                   her into the room with water.
Everything thirsts. There is only so much time for thirst.

The weather forecast calls for sun tomorrow and through
the week, and I am waiting for it. What kind of day will
it be? How many birds
                                                  will hide in the reeds, snowy egrets,
night herons, rails with tangerine beaks? I feel weather
on my skin. I breathe it. When someone sees me walking,
I am the weather. My mother tells me how quiet the house is
in Colorado
                      now the cats are gone. She tells me the day is clear
and warm. I want summer, and every time I want summer,
the days disappear, the last
                                                               birds speed past my window.
The Great Basin fills with storm clouds. It rains all day,
blessed rain that smears every window in the house with green.

And I am in the middle of losing every weather and spring.