--To Toni Williams (1944-2004)

In another year, perhaps, we could recall
all those seasons we had chosen not to mourn
today.
         A single lily spreads, thrust from mud
where snow covered your blood. This is the way
spring would come, you said

                                      fifty days after

you left. Perhaps the cold will return once more
after the rain
                  after fifty days

                                      after you leave again.

©2005, Justine Nicholas

Buds throb red.

Cold raindrops cling
to bare branches
after the first
April storm.

My fingertips swelling,
my body pulses:

the center
of this old wound,
still fresh.

Still, I don’t
pull off my gloves--

There are no leaves
opening
from this tree.

©1991, Justine Nicholas
(originally published in The Brooklyn Review
under the author’s old name, Nicholas Valinotti)

Justine Nicholas lives in New York City. Her poems and stories have appeared in New York Stories, The Brooklyn Review, Cottonwood, The Minnesota Review and other journals under her current name as well as her former name, Nicholas (Nick) Valinotti. She also has a poem in our Winter anthology, “Palais d’Hiver.”

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