Two feet of snow
for three months
have finally melted
and revealed
our earliest spring garden —

a blue bucket, not ours,
three grocery bags, torn,
a shredded dry cleaner bag,
various bricks, once neatly stacked,
     now leveled and tossed,
a fairy, headless but still holding wind chimes,
     eighteen inches from its stand,
a sack of concrete mix, swollen and burst,
     with its paper sack thinned and scattered in pieces,

a receipt from Walgreens for toothpaste and dog food,
two styrofoam cups, crumbled and flattened,
ten feet of twisted wire,
a beer can,
a bird feeder,
nine – yes, nine! – newspapers
     still in their blue bags
     on either side of our front porch.

Not much of a beginning,
but it will come.