Unseasonably

"I look for you in the blur..."

Unseasonably



i.

Spring coming in now, in the light, in these scintillated edges when it touches a thing, and returns things—say, the dormant globe thistle, rows of faded gravestones, the ragged sparrow perched on a chain-link fence—to their names. We catch our breath and wait. Tomorrow, snow. 




ii.

The delirium of spring: colors emerging, margins blurred. Wind spinning bright shackles over the pond before dispersing into a warped reflection of the sky. In this weather, I walk a half-step beyond my body. In this weather, I practice death. Pale, carbonated light, within which all things from a distance appear to levitate. 



 
iii.

April’s unrecognizable. Each breeze a husk of summer’s bloodlessness. Insects the size of a fist. No, the heart can’t catch up, torn into sepia grief. Every wild and nameless thing mindlessly reaching. I look for you in the blur — a face to anchor my mind in the real.

 


iv.

Some color returns. Incandescent green horizon. Listen to frogs trill deep in the brush, and know it is spring. A flowering pear tree flickers white through a ragged curtain of rain. A swallow cuts against the current and vanishes. This is the sacrament of the present moment. Time passes through the body, leaving a poem in the mouth.