MY COUSIN IN APRIL

Under cerulean, amid her backyard’s knobby rhubarb squats
My cousin to giggle with her baby, pat
His bald top. From a window I can catch them mull basil,
Glinty silica, sienna through the ground’s brocade
Of tarragon or pause under the oblong shade
Of the garage. The nervous, emerald
Fanning of some rhizome skims my cousin’s knee
As up and down she bends to the baby.
I’m knitting sweaters for her second child.
As though, down miles of dinners, had not heard her rock her bed
In rage and thought it years she lay, locked in that tantrum …
Oh but such stir as in her body had to come round. Amid violet,
Azalea, round around the whole arriving garden
Now with her son she passes what I paused
To catch, the early bud phases, on the springing grass.