By Sean Norton

                                                 Due to the late
March freeze and pale sun--flat as a plate--
the clumps of wet snow everywhere, the
midnight falling of things
one hundred days cannot erase,
this deep night with its absence & God

hardly feels deep all of a sudden.
The lens in and out of focus.
Good lookin' right? I didn't mean
to scare you with the sweet potato.

I am held tighter than the needles
of a pine. And I am held out to the soft
flesh of things, lowly & protected.

I have been mad longer with love
than I have been alive.

Sean Norton is the author of the book of poems, "Bad With Faces," from Red Morning Press. He lives in Ann Arbor, Mich., where he is the Assistant Director of the University of Michigan's Graduate Creative Writing Program.