So Long April

While every anthophilous (frequenter of flowers) loves an April,
I slump sad to know the frailty of such things,
and to know that within every pistil, stamen, or human,
lies an everlasting contradiction
of coming and going.
The last days of this glad April
may yet turn to wet winter,
the sallow window light coming through the trees
says there’s trouble in the neighbour’s house,
the perfect stillness of this sunrise over the gulf island
will rage, in time, by fire or flood,
or war — that demon, stupidly thought distant.
But what of it?
Why spend an April, month of poetry no less,
bracing yourself, as though testing the strength of a Taser?
This habit of mind, this fret, almost a craft,
steeling, preparing, for the worst,
what’s it cost?
True, the mind’s nature is to plan and so prevent,
to perceive and so invent.
But what of the soul?
Can the mind, through its preoccupations, starve the soul,
sever itself from the heart and claim a supreme and secure domain?
Can the soul’s reception of a force beyond itself,
soften the heart and renew the mind?
Does shame constrict the intellect, does forgiveness enlarge it?
and resurrect the heart’s first instinct?
If wars within, finally end, would all things change
out there? O Mercy.

Weary with thought, I laid down by a daffodil,
and while the morning dripped away, and the grass creased my face,
there appeared, approaching, one who might have been a gardener,
dark-moon face and sun-pierced feet and lanterns for eyes,
who saw the hollows that worry’s erosion had made in me,
then said to me, rise,
and with the flat of her rake struck my shoulder,
and what rang out were notes of dismay and remorse,
dejection and joy, surrender and grace,
swirling, entwining, transfiguring,
singing me into a reckless wholeness:
          praise song and Singer,
          praise April’s trip to May,
          praise every month, these years, this life, the stunning frailty,
          praise all newborn babies, praise our deep-creased faces, praise
          the medicine of purring pigeon, shrieking peahen, silent falcon,
          praise the breeze, now visible in the dance of daffodils, mirrored
          in lily-clouded sloughs, praise the greens going gold
          and the rust-gilded hills ebbing at the rim of earth,
          praise the sun, the gardener, the nearing gleaner.
So long April, you dark beauty, perhaps we’ll meet again.