winter bed

I ran with leaves down the sidewalk

as the sky turned from burnt grey

toward a melancholy marigold.

The tulips had been waiting inside since September;

"double early," they're called,

but I've been running late.

The soil needed turning.

The shovel scraped and then sank,

revealing glistening crystals of frost

in what would become 

my tulips' bed.

In the wind, the bulbs' papery skin

flaked off like an onion,

and my fingers froze

in waxy gloves of soil.

I knelt, 

nestled those ivory bulbs

into their dark winter beds

and crumbled more cold earth

over their heads.

When they rise in the spring,

will they remember the early evening

when the wind and the leaves

sang them to sleep?