Cold Gap

Hedged in with false starts and holdovers,

flurries among whip-or-wills, and blackberries

suddenly frozen in their many pockets,

who's to say a life isn't one season?

I think of a certain type of briar

with useless berries at the end of a long leafy flow.

As a child I hacked paths to the woods through them

every spring, and kept the ways open

till fall. But somehow between then

and the next growing, it was as if

I had never lashed the stalks with my machete.

If I rested in winter and slept,

I missed some spring too. So sleep

is only a cold gap you pass through,

and no season after all. As always, turning back

to my blade, I opened the stops in the cane sprays.