This first appeared in The Chimaera.
Wednesday
Among
these sparrows, frogs, and chickadees,
Finally
warmed by sun instead of steam,
Too
early for the shift to certainties,
Pentameter
to prose, maybe I dream
Of
sex and violets. Perhaps I know
What
scientists on salary forecast:
This
Thursday, patchy fog and early snow.
Their
spring comes early, but it does not last
Forever.
So I’m told. No season does
Which
lies beneath the dirt today. Tomorrow
The
violets will be the spring that was.
They
lend me verse. Whatever else I borrow,
I
offer back, as though I had a choice.
First
day of spring, this is my winter voice.
Whensday
Dr
Dee and his chicks, that brood who read
Fire
and numbers, every comet signed,
What
good are they? Their sun is not a head
Of
state. Mere shape lives only in the mind,
In
digs where violence dwells, sex of a kind,
Like
ringing changes on these lilybells.
He
knew his time, he told his time. And then?
I
heard the answer. Like the heart, it tells
The
count. It told the weather, but not when.
I
take my time. It will be small and soon.
He
only heard the pitch of notes that men
Are
built to hear. I think I heard that tune3
Performing
here. The feeder and the grass
Bear
the refrain: “A lass, my love, a lass.”
Wedsday
Nobody
claims that flowers are untrue
Because
they claim their pollen from the wind.
Imagine
being proffered that you--
“It
was the zephyr did it. I’m unskinned,
I’m
virgin as a stone.” Of course you are.
The
hyacinths immaculately flower.
They
took their color from a passing star
While
you were sleeping: some ungodly hour
When
spring believed that nobody was watching.
Tulips
push through. The grass begins to sweat.
Troo-loo
the song the songbirds have been hatching:
Tra-la
the song they urge us to forget.
Trust
is a cycle. If we do the same,
We
get it back. And no one knows its name.
Wendsday
A
pilgrimage, spring having sprung, we go
The
places we go every day, to see
What
sun has done to change the world we know:
It
starts from scratch, except for me and thee.
We
are now what we have been, more and less,
Parts
shed, augmented, by and large forgotten.
We
can still flower—there is that, God bless--
So
fertile we, so much to work with, rotten
Right
to the corps. They call these zephyrs. Feel
Commotion
in the ground? No? I don’t either.
From
this point forward, nothing much is real—
No
pilgrims, Aprille, smalle foweles neither.
Spring
forward. Fall back. Either way we stand
Right
where we are, not sky, not wholly land.