DRIFT

Crocuses lesion winter purple with answers.

They expose snow’s illusion: incurable ground.

The highway, brusque, resists all seasons. 

Geese poke through the sky and shift like iron

filings to spring’s magnet.  Their elastic inscription

unfolds like a calendar: solstice, surgery.

Heedless of the borrow ponds, a few drift

onto the median like ashes, so intent on creation

they’ll try to build their nests between the lanes.

Elizabeth Harlan-Ferlo's poems have appeared in Anglican Theological Review, Prick of the Spindle, LiturgicalCredo, Poet Lore, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Burnside Review, Controlled Burn, and  Bellingham Review. She teaches in the Religion and Philosophy Department at Oregon Episcopal School in Portland.