Love Poem from the Wrong Side of the Rain

What would April do? Tease hidden
meanings from the bulbs, raise the stakes
and double my entendres, and bet
all my roses on the bottom line.

But it’s the season of embarrassed trees,
the modest charms of leaf-rot and briar
and hawk-scat thawing on the muddy path:
skinny March at an earnest latitude.

So tell me, Muse: where around here might a woman
find a little flint and tinder,
some figure of feisty speech, a correlative for kisses
that would make a grown man weep if she put it
all on the table and headed out
for good into the long-stemmed rain?