Justin Groppuso-Cook

White Spring

                  for Jenni Opie

I.

She twirls
orbiting an evergreen—

her sundress
spring daze & sleet

blur the landscape

II.

Sparrow bones
grow

            from snow
into the white

light sky

III.

Morning
pours
from peaks

on the horizon—

sunshine pools
shadows

between
our breaths

IV.

She is spring
leaves

bleached by winter

twirling

a veil of mist

& wind
glistening nude

Justin Groppuso-Cook is a writer-in-residence at InsideOut Literary Arts Project and poetry reader for West Trade Review. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets, Ghost City Press, Bear Review, Harbor Review, Luna Luna Magazine, and EcoTheo Review among others. He received the 2021 Haunted Waters Press Award for Poetry and was a finalist for Black Warrior Review's 2022 Poetry Contest. His chapbook, Illuminated Pupils, was a semi-finalist for the Tomaž Šalamun Prize. More information can be found on his website, www.sunnimani.com.