March 18, J.S. Absher (September 2026)

March 18

A skink has taken up in the new wall.
I saw its blue tail vanish into a chink
just now. It’s cold for March, but the courses
of slate are basking in midday sun. I think
I’d like the wall if I were born a lizard;
I’d like this unkempt corner of my yard.
 
Periwinkle blooms through the leaf litter.
Clumps of hellebore raise their Lenten blooms.
(The honeysuckle stubbornly bloomed all winter.)
The Muhle grass flaunts its sunlit plumes.
Perhaps my gray hair silvers in the sun,
metal refined by age before I’m done.