On one of the earliest days of what may be
an early spring, with fifty degrees in the sun
but not a single trace of green to toe up
under the bleached, snow-flattened grass,
my wife and I walk the thickety edge
of a draw, weaving our way through a tangle
of browns of every key and hue, through knuckled
blood-brown sumac canes and about and around
the rusty cedars, bending in under the elbows
of bur oaks, the two of us taking out turns
in the lead, first Kathleen, pausing to hold back
the whip of a low branch for me, then me
out in front, holding a low branch back for her
in the manner of love, we two among so many
browns around and under and above, like the grain
in a rough oak plank leaned up against the sky
or, better, like slats in a basket, loosely woven,
my wife’s red jacket showing through a crack.