What about spring?
Or the earth’s movement
Along the ecliptic?
Or autumn’s eyes on the
Southern Hemisphere?
Leaves burning into multifarious colors
Flowers blooming on apple, cherry, persimmon,
Trillium?
What about the ripening of fruit
And the tastes of winter?
And the roots of the
Evening primrose in the
Pan with wild greens and the
First leaves of spinach, kale,
Cilantro?
And the new moon in Aries
And the old moon before
It detached itself from the
Earth when plants and animals
Were but the same butterfly
As they moved across the face
Of the earth
As the corpses of memory
Precipitated into and out of form and
Water and fire, mercurial water,
Sulfuric fire stultified salt bodies
Into a gelatinous mass
That crossed the threshold
In its return to an idea?
And the light that sparkled on the lake today?
And the kingfisher that so swiftly plucked
The smallmouth from the frozen ripples of the still
Wind off the membrane between
Cosmos and terra?
I was there watching.
I was there with the hawkweed,
Winter cress, mayapple in bloom,
With the egret, the redtail, the Canada
Goose, northern red oak, paw paw,
The sycamore.
And I laid down in the
Sun and the wintery blast,
The burgeoning wild horses of spring riding
Slipshod over the
Rhythms of my
blood