On the Equinox

Now Old Man Winter shakes his purse
And frowns at his barren accounts;
His manor crumbles with each curse:
How did he squander such amounts?

He thunders through the empty hall,
Opens the vault of hail and gust--
His savings--but he's spent them all;
Where once was sleet, now all is dust.

Now Spring steps cautious down the street
And shines each penny like it's gold;
She smiles at the sun's new heat
Because she remembers the cold.

Then Love creeps in, a child of Spring:
All pink, and pale, and tiptoeing.




photograph by Mikey Baratta

The Grasshopper in Winter

The grasshopper on the ground is dead--
not by boot, or hooting bird,
or by sultry spider--
but dead
as the grass, passed away,
and the hop that ceased.

His armor is accounted for,
though curled in the afterlife
into some aquatic thing.
The hop is gone,
but perhaps in that small beyond,
he swims.




art: "The Warrior in Winter," by Julia Jeffrey

In Spring

Everyone’s cold. To-do list
stretches miles and I won’t
get out of bed. Email from a sane man
screams I AM AFRAID
YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN ME
and I’m dropping small tears
on your shirt but you’re
not in it. Kids outside
are doing what they’re supposed to,
screaming, pushing, falling down,
and I see your frown in a photo
and it’s frostbite on my bones.

You’re gone. Can’t feel
my feet, but lavender fingers ache.
Grief counselors preach acceptance:
You aren’t coming back.

I say, take me, wakening earth,
take what’s left of this frozen stone.
Close that wound up. Let spring begin.


photograph by Allie Taylor

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Starlings in Winter

Chunky and noisy,

but with stars in their black feathers,

they spring from the telephone wire

and instantly


they are acrobats

in the freezing wind.

And now, in the theater of air,

they swing over buildings,


dipping and rising;

they float like one stippled star

that opens,

becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;

and you watch
and you try

but you simply can't imagine

how they do it

with no articulated instruction, no pause,

only the silent confirmation

that they are this notable thing,


this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin

over and over again,

full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,


even in the leafless winter,

even in the ashy city.

I am thinking now

of grief, and of getting past it;



I feel my boots

trying to leave the ground,

I feel my heart

pumping hard, I want



to think again of dangerous and noble things.

I want to be light and frolicsome.

I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,

as though I had wings.




-Mary Oliver

photograph by Jipps

My Mother Encounters Celebrities and I Misunderstand

I.

One winter before I was born
my mother stepped into an elevator.
The silent brass doors slid
together too quickly and she toppled,
landing face-first

in Baryshnikov's striped mink coat.
She told me this when I was six
and leaping, a blizzard of tulle
and breathlessness around
her rocking chair. As I remember it,

I say now, He was rude to you.
Did Baryshnikov really push you?


Short, she says, looking over
the Sunday Style section. I didn't say rude.
I said short.




photograph by Chuck Domitrovich

For Keeps

"You want me to hurt you. You're
asking me to hurt you. To cut you so deep
it leaves a mark?"
The sunlight is clear but far away.
"A gash," he says, and clutches his ribs.
The trees blow kisses. He stops walking.
She is five paces ahead
before she notices.

She kicks a chunk of broken sidewalk.
Dried maple leaves scrape
across the tops of her shoes. Light
through her ring makes rubies
on the pavement.





photograph by Rob Hodnett

Lady Suo's Clavicle: A Corollary

after Lady Suo (11th-12th cent.)

That early fall night
When I woke to find
Your sleeping cheek (warm weight
On my shoulder) may never
Have happened,
But the dream is nearly enough.





photograph by Ani Eleuterio

Anna in the Brambles

She had hidden the dark, oily seeds,
buried them deep in the dry side of the garden.
Winter saw rock-hard ground, silence between rooms,
white skies. And then spring, and with the rise
of string beans, peppers, foxglove,
the garden gave an army
of thorny, hungry spines.
She was uprooting them, swearing, bleeding,
when I found her in the dirt.




photograph by wordsforsnow

After a Long Winter

There are trees near your house
that you did not know were cherry
until the blossoms came.









photograph by Toshihiro Oshima

The Language of Flowers: Lily of the Valley

sweetness, humility, healing, spring, a return to happiness

I sleep late. The lawnmowers
do not wake me, nor the landlord's
angry wife. The light
finds my eyes gently,
as the rain begins. The house
is empty. The bright street,
deserted. The comforter
has been rejected, a cool white dog
at the foot of the bed.

All the clocks are wrong or gone,
I guess he took his with him. I force open
a window. It is time to start the day.





painting by Cassandra Barney
another season of floriography begins.

The First Beautiful Day

Spring slides over the last patch of gray;
somewhere a river is thawing.
My tongue is heavy with flowers.




photograph by Rachel K

Spring

The carrots are born and the rabbits
are dying. The root came up--
crayon orange, firm with promise--from
the dry rows just off the porch.

Over the fence the neighbor's pool
has claimed another rabbit. Face first
like a fish. Still as a lily pad.
Her nose does not know
the riches are ready.






photograph by Emily McPhie

Tour Jeté

She was stunned at the revolution
of every year. Each time a season turned
she squinted, surprised. Did anyone believe
autumn would come again? And, too,
disorientation—she was alive this time,
this year, reason be damned.

Equinox and warmer light left
her eyebrows floating, dark
in the lake of her forehead.
(The leaves are actually changing,
the April air does feel like that.)




an old poem, revised for 2009
photograph by Alison Scarpulla

Why I Don't Send You Dirges (On Reading McDonald's "Anniversary")

How strange, these days, that love--
improbable, impossible, unforgivable--
not grief, is the birthing tide
I've come to ride to quiet morning shores.
Each night erases the last.




photograph by flickr user el neko
original poem here

Three Days In

Nothing is longer
than these twenty-eight days, not
waiting rooms, not pregnancy tests,
not the moment when the brakes
will not save you. In four weeks
I will die, find my own grave,
pull the earth blanket over
my grateful eyes. In four weeks
I will be born, white-hot
from the belly of a meteor,
shooting feathers and sparks,
burning every bridge I come to.




photograph by flickr user Johnson Cameraface

Shouted from the Office Window

I see the snow
melting, Spring, don't pretend
you're not out there.





photograph by flickr user Todd (cedarkayak)

The Apartment by the Train Tracks

In summer, when every single thing
sticks to every other thing,
we lie heavy on threadbare bedclothes.

Through the loose window screen, the first note
of a beautiful breeze carries on it
an iron lullaby, a sleepy, solid embrace.

And behind it, stuck to the back window
of the rearmost car, the fallen leaf,
fall's first casualty.



photograph by flickr user Praveen

Walking in September

And just when I was sure that I
would never live again the autumn comes.


The earth is round and will never stop spinning.




photograph by Andreas Wolkerstorfer

Toward the Bus Shelter

You walked fast across the empty courtyard,
and I followed brisk behind. It would have looked
like I was chasing you. The tails of the scarf I bought you
were trapped beneath your backpack straps,
and you stopped to unstrangle yourself.

The lavender sky was cloudless, or all clouds.
My eyes streamed with the wind.





photograph by Alisa Resnik

March

So much collides
In these small days. Today
Spring begins, and Purim at sundown:
The earth rolls sleepily into a patch
Of sunlight. We don masks
And crowns.
Tomorrow Jesus will die,
And the moon will fill herself
Full. Sunday he will rise:
Small feet will shift
In ankle socks. We speak
Murder to one another;
Fertility, salvation. Birdsong.
We are wrapped
In the sky-blue skirts
Of holy women and heroines, and red forgiveness
Runs down the aisles. We will hide our faces
And plant eggs
Like they were seeds. We will all
Be reborn.



photograph by DeviantArt user planetkat