A Route of Evanescence

A Route of Evanescence,

With a revolving Wheel –

A Resonance of Emerald

A Rush of Cochineal –

And every Blossom on the Bush

Adjusts it’s tumbled Head –

The Mail from Tunis – probably,

An easy Morning’s Ride –

Emily Dickinson

Jane Hirshfield! Oh, Jane!

The Weighing

The heart's reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.

As the drought-starved
eland forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her,
enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other.

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.

Jane Hirshfield

More April-ness!

Early April

Helpless to the spinning world around me…

-Rebecca Marcus

The cyclists can’t help seeming self-important

and the daffodils can’t help interloping

on the edges of dark gardens; the shaggy birches

can’t help tending them in peeling robes

and the purple crocuses can’t keep from clashing

with the orange noise of birds; the spring

can’t help its interruptions and the morning

can’t help its illusion of beginning again

beginning, and the wanderer can’t help

squandering the dimes of her small fortune

or wish the morning could be the first line

of a drawing her daughter began again; what if

this was our first day, Becky, and the bulb

of the heart humming in frost all those months

came up as you were riding by, the orange

birds requesting your attention and the first light

falling on your dark eyes, knowing it was good?

Jessica Greenbaum

 *** 

This Moment
 

A neighbourhood.
At dusk.

Things are getting ready
to happen
out of sight.

Stars and moths.
And rinds slanting around fruit.

But not yet.

One tree is black.
One window is yellow as butter.

A woman leans down to catch a child
who has run into her arms
this moment.

Stars rise.
Moths flutter.
Apples sweeten in the dark. 

Eavan Boland