Acer rubrum for Valentine’s Day

by Karla Linn Merrifield
                     
Swamp maples begin leafing
in February in Central Florida.
Spring is stingy with their crimson
sequins or sparing of sightseers’ eyes.
I catch too few, so squint
into water below doubling the color
upon reflection.
 
A tree’s sap seems to be flowering
blood across the pond’s still surface.
A single maple in a singular swamp
is just now— now—coming into bud.
I am somehow younger, rubied
in the light, blushing in the shadows:
a girl again, rouged with youth.