WHISTLING SHADE


Spring Comes to Minnesota Security Hospital

by Alixa Doom


Spring sun through windows:
young man at the entrance lifts
hands into handcuffs.

Courtyard sun warms up
patient's painting on brick wall:
tulips all colors.

Sun lays bars of gold
across the gray tile floors;
the inmates walk through.

Thrilled to be leaving
he sweeps through the library,
collects hugs from friends.

Five years here over,
arms full with two bags he waits
for the door's buzzer.

Men with heavy feet
file out of the spring woods,
the same trail as deer.

Tornado drill sounds:
locked men line up in hallways,
laugh of a wild wind.

Courtyard sky through wire;
blue crocus in shadow cells
cast by web of fence.

Misty May morning,
old gravestones and bee boxes—
how sweet the honey!

I snip courtyard rose;
all day patients at my desk—
commotion of rose.

Sun turns them silver:
seeds dropping in parachutes
through blades of wire fence.

High above yard wire:
wild swan migration flowing
all the way to town.