I feel like a mother.

My tulips are coming up. They rise

from deep silence, bodies

caught somewhere in a dark throat of earth.

The seeds were wrapped in onion layers

of patience—what keeps them warm

from October, shadowed in deep orange,

to the first light

of spring, tones of cold steel,

slush. It seems forever.

At last, tendrils unfurl in the shock

of up, used to being under, they can’t help

but gaze. What a miracle

of greeny stems, openings, and petals lifting

toward something like love-warm sun and all that

space…..

What the seed knows, dying all the way

through February is

I am made for another world

It breaks through wooden body,

soft layer of fur

to change its life.