Virginia   Medicine rain and mounds of melting snow ended the Christmas drought — December hid gingerly forehints of July: cock’s crow & ghost guitars playing you my Blue Ridge Mountain heartthrob. A fence-hung droplet held an inverse plot of woods above; below, a kindness of ravens took wing and filled the empty oaks with nestling young. Our knowing and hoping fused in that liquid world, as tiny as it was complete. O seed of virgin time and burgeoning light, pearl of concentric skies unfolding, bead of consecrated rain — encircle fields awash with dawn and dreams and love revealed.                                               for Meg     © Michael Fleming Casper, Wyoming April 1999