Incident with Nature, Late

Clean, the gust, prying
me open for the first time
this week—as I—
not exactly wind-
like in the running
thirty & already hunched
over after three stoic
blocks & one big sloppy
knock into the neighbor’s
knotty fence decide it’s
as good a place as any
to stop, pant
& smell the roses—
except there are no
roses, proverbial
or otherwise, except
a nondescript shrub
quivering
with what I hereby dub
the “piney-ness
of an Indiana March”