We made March by barest plurality;

desperate extrapolation; drastic 

expectation of the bouquet of May 

flowers my wife will buy sighing, for herself;

April showers’ tentative attendance.

Dispel our rhetoric of failure, March,

pardon the immutable Christmas lights, 

rubble of felled ornaments we’d taken 

all along for lessons we were daily

learning, hunkered in one sweater. Nightly

we’ve begun undressing by the window

in dreams of dream homes; adequate reward

for our faith, our endurance, as if 

inaudible in the neighbor’s backyard.