Why wait till spring?
Put the cut branches early into water
and watch them bloom.
That is the way with them:
water, sap, a vase.
This house is altogether too small.
The wings are beating inside my ribs
asking for release, saying
now, not tomorrow.
Already those yellow starbursts
are nubbling my mind,
twigs too swollen to be endured:
here, here, look at me.
If I were a bee
I’d howl.
-Janet MacFadyen
Janet MacFadyen is author of two poetry collections and three chapbooks. Her poetry appears in Scientific American, CALYX, Crannóg, Q/A Poetry, and is forthcoming in Sweet and The Blue Nib. She was a fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and is managing editor of Slate Roof Press (www.slateroofpress.com).