Winter’s End, Treatment Pause

Elisa A. Garza

April 30, 2023

As spring reaches around winter’s body,

a walk through hazy fog under gray sky

reveals a few silent birds sitting still,

a lone hawk gliding tree line to tree line.

Pushed north by the same humid breeze that brings 

fog, the bayou’s current flows the wrong way,

and ripples collect against dried grass, each 

little nudge rejecting the washed-up trash.

Too quiet, too drab, too unkempt for spring,

when blooms riot, compete for best color,

birds gurgle like brooks and shout hellos, leaves 

race into green, and grass grows above trash 

that rain’s high waters couldn’t run off. That spring,

starting fresh as a promise, deep in my flesh.

Elisa A. Garza has published two chapbooks, Between the Light / entre la claridad (Mouthfeel Press) and Familia.  Individual poems currently appear in The Bayou Review, Amarillo Bay, and PRISM International.  She has taught for public schools, universities, and community programs and now works as a freelance editor.