Welcome home party...We share poems
and a dish of mango ice cream.

Protected by the bright blue bus stop,
we watch the whirling steel-gray clouds.

Reading poems on the porch...
a narrowing of the pine tree's shadow.

Instead of news, morning cartoons;
the house too quiet with the kids gone.

                      Snow drifts       fill the stairwell
she calls the neighbors       to dig her out

early morning rain       the alley fills
                          with       oil-slickened puddles

      a spider's web       across the bathroom sink
                        who       is more frightened?

              What happened       to spring?
Perhaps the butterflies       have lost their way

        late to school       a mother and daughter
                rehearse       spelling test words