March, First Rain
And hesitant, and thin on the ground,
colder, almost, than the snow
it will be before dark.
But there's the smell of the earth,
less frozen somehow,
despite the frost caught deep below
the suck of mud
on every foot that passes,
and the drops on my cheeks,
like tears, involuntary
and unstoppable. Glaze
of ice, treacherous, over
unmelted drifts,
but the willow buds have opened
and soft catkins with their damp fur
arch tiny gray backs
in the hissing wet,
and a voice in the wind,
muezzin from the minaret of pines,
is calling out god's new name.
B.J. Buckley is a Montana poet and writer who has worked as a teaching artist in Arts-in-Schools and Communities programs throughout the West and Midwest for more than four decades. Read more.