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Risa Bear
walks between the beds
critical of eye, noting the way the leaves
of corn have curled upon themselves,
rattling in hardly any breeze at all.
They'd like to make believe it's Autumn now,
would they? Playing at getting past the part
where seed heads form, waving their silky hair,
and then depart, leaving the leaves bereft
of any purpose but to leave this world --
except, of course, they don't: that is the gift
of mulch. She brings the hose and couples to
its end a yellow whirligig, made to sing
the holy song of water to the leaves.
Today, green fullness. Tomorrow, living grain.
The frost under our feet
doesn’t cough that loudly,
yet it sounds more like
an old man’s mumbling.
The wind is not breathing
fast and chilly like last month.
Undressed trees
do not look that pretty
yet they seem shy, hiding within
thousands of pregnant buds.
It’s February,
the daylight
has emerged victorious
from its great battle
against dark.
But the march to Life . . .
Break song to sing the new song!
Clouds leap, flowers bloom.
Soon amid the inviolable places
Will green, rustling steeples chime again
With the sweet, glassy bell-notes of the wren.
Soon the plain shall lie beneath blue spaces —
Bold and broad and ruddy in the sun,
Long and lean to the moon when day is done.
Soon will come the strange, heart-lifting season
When through the dark, still dawns, where nothing was,
Steals the mysterious whisper of growing grass;
And a joy like pain possesses the soul, without reason,
Between the budding of day and the lapse of night,
With the clear, cold scent of wet starlight.
I thought to die that night in the solitude where they would never find me...
But there was time...
And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of the mountain,
staring into the abyss...
I do not know how long...
I could not count the hours, they ran so fast
Like little bare-foot urchins--shaking my hands away...
But I remember
Somewhere water trickled like a thin severed vein...
And a wind came out of the grass,
Touching me gently, tentatively, like a paw.
As the night grew
The gray cloud that had covered the sky like sackcloth
Fell in ashen folds about the hills,
Like hooded virgins, pulling their cloaks about them...
There must have been a spent moon,
Who would fear death when there is April?
Like a flame, like a song,
To heal all who have lived with yearning
Year-through, life-long.
When there is April with fulfilment
For longing and for pain.
For every reaching hand that beauty
Has lured in vain.
Who would shrink from the earth when April
With slim rain hands shall reach
Through the doors of dark, and call them
Who love her speech.
So long as there is April
My heart is high,
Lifting up its white dreams
To the sky.
As trees hold up their blossoms
In a blowing cloud,
My hands are reaching.
My hands are proud.
All the crumbled splendours
Of autumn, and the cries
Of winds that I remember
Cannot make me wise.
Like the trees of April
Fearless and fair —
My heart swings its censers
Through the golden air.
Poet, sing me a song to-day !
But the world grows old and my hair is gray.
Ah no ! there are birds on the lilac bushes
And a snow-drop out of the wet earth pushes.
Two chattering robins are planning a marriage,
And see ! there's a baby all pink in its carriage !
And the sun is wiping the clouds from his brow,
And who can look back when it's always now?
Oh, what is the use of a poet, say,
If he will not sing me a song to-day?
When gray clouds break on southern skies
And winds of March begin to blow,
Our fancies run to Summer sighs,
That whisper and delight us so.
For in this stormy month of winds
The first new pulse of life is felt,
When Spring with all her sweets begins
Where Winter's ice and snow have dwelt.
The bluebird carols out his note,
A prelude to the country 'round
Of chimes, a few more days remote,
To which the forest will resound.
The plowman's song, the forest chime.
The upturned sod, the country scene,
Bespeak a resurrection time
In air, sky, and sprouting green.
Now into hearts long empty of the sun
The morning comes again with golden light
And all the shades of the half-dusk are done
And all the crevices are suddenly bright.
So gradually had love lain down to sleep,
We knew it not ; but when we saw his head
Pillowed and sunken in a trance so deep
We whispered shuddering that he was dead.
Then you like Psyche took the light and leant
Over the monster lying in his place,
Daring, despairing, trembling as you bent . . .
But love raised up his new-awakening face
And into our hearts long empty of the sun
We felt the sky-distilled bright liquor run.
The night was a failure but why not--?
In the darkness
with the pale dawn seething at the window
through the black frame
I could not be free,
not free myself from the past, those others--
and our love was a confusion,
there was a horror,
you recoiled away from me.
Now, in the morning
As we sit in the sunshine on the seat by the little shrine,
And look at the mountain-walls,
Walls of blue shadow,
And see so near at our feet in the meadow
Myriads of dandelion pappus
Bubbles ravelled in the dark green grass
Am no longer lame since Spring
Stooped to me where I lay,
And charmed with flute and silver lute
My laggard limbs to play.
Her voice is sweet as long-stored wine;
I leap like a hounded fawn;
I rise and follow over hill and hollow
To the flush of the crimson dawn!