Before peonies, late March 2020

One day you walk out your door, unhappy.
Your eyes roll with anger, looking anywhere

for relief, but find none. The agitation dislodges
a lash which falls, unmissed like a happy moment

not worth your time, to the earth by the walkway.
A season passes. The last week of March

you walk out your door, unhappy, head down,
your unhappiness fortunately angled so you see them.

They rise like something going backwards in time.
Like how memories grow. Curious, inevitable.

Snakes rolled over by countless tires, crumpled
yet rising to unheard music, enchanted maybe.

Each morning they elongate, uncrinkle, dance
slowly toward the sun. The crumpled snakeheads

fill with — what? — the moment you discarded
and the countless moments it created in turn,

filling like a reverse venom, crowding out the poison
tooth of regret, bursting open, these are all the

effects of your happiness, countless effects of being,
weightless and regal, dancing in the slightest breeze

or is that you dancing, crushed snake of a soul,
forgiving the wheel and opening to the sun?