Now early April, and this triptych's wings
open to breasts and leafless trees, their hills
still brown earth touched with green. Small crocus bloom
around a carpet's edge, where figures rest
almost like lotus: supple, bent limbs pressed
against each other, hand touching her womb
before the ram, whose curled form fulfills
the promise of a well, while foreign birds

move from the center. Figures without words
repose themselves on leaves, in loess caves,
as infants had before. A woman sits
with pointed breasts in a red skirt, her ear
bearing a gathered bloom. Quills reappear,
goat heads and trees remake the scene. Those pits
cut into earth aren't populated graves:
those trees, dark stems uprooted, still survive

since in the final panel blossoms thrive.
Beaks gather crocus, women stand and hold
against bare skin long curving strands which hide
whatever he has longed for, but reveal
all he has gained: his paradise is real
and filled with petaled trees whose roots provide
food for symbolic fruit veined leaves enfold,
now ripening this land where no bird sings.