After Moving
In a room full of boxes, I am listening
to the rain falling on my roof for the first time.
It's March. Denver doesn't know
whether it wants to be spring. Or maybe
that's not the right way to say it.
Everywhere wants to be spring. Things bloom early
and hard frost drags the season back.
Here the birds start singing long before the sun
has shown any sliver of its arc. Here the birds are trying
to build a nest in a hole in the siding
above my back door. I chase them off,
but like shadows they wait
and return. It is impossible not to love them.
They are the color of roadside peaches.
ANDREW HEMMERT is the author of Blessing the Exoskeleton (Pitt Poetry Series) and Sawgrass Sky (Texas Review Press). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various magazines, including The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern Review. He won the 2018 River Styx International Poetry Contest. He earned his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and currently serves as a poetry editor for Driftwood Press.