This Is Also Spring
 
A moment can be a memory
which makes me wonder
if a moment can fail
to be memory. Can I be
so erased from time that seeing
and hearing and yes, smelling
the wind does not trigger
other moments, make me
remember another time,
another wind like the sting
from smoke on the Santa Ana,
a wind so persistent
that it has a name. But that
was another time and this
is now. This unnamed wind
has no reputation, but it comes
each spring and blows rain
and bottle cap-sized hail,
beating back the first blooms
of spring, leaving them broken
in the mud. This happens so much
that it is not a memory, only detail
for what spring is—
a snapped green stem
next to torn yellow petals.