Spring Comes Home
Spring comes home
in a dead dog's mask
old bones ask
for yesterday's rains
dust kneels to be made
tall wheat again;
clouds dry and pass
as the grackles grate,
too soon, too soon
and then, too late.
A dead-leaf kiss,
a lover's knot
tied in a corner
the wind forgot.
You lit my face
for a fire in snow;
we glowed for a time
before the blow
too late to come,
too soon to go.
Now there is
a falling light,
no home on the moon,
stark flares in the night,
war news at noon
a flash of flight
that breaks the gate;
and the grackles grate
too soon, too soon,
and then, too late.
~March 2017
at real toads
Image: The Enigma, 1871, by Gustave Dore Public domain.
I love this one, Joy. It's been too long since I visited. The image of dust to wheat is especially powerful, and the refrain is so, so melancholy and so universal.
ReplyDeleteThere is a duality in the first three lines that leave me grateful and anxious--spring comes (and that's always good), but I can't stop thinking about the dead dog and bones... The anxiety is increased in the repetitions, as if the speaker can't find a fixed place or time to be in, no home.
ReplyDeleteFun useless fact: I always scroll down for the info on your illustration, first. I see our convo about grackles percolated and appeared in this poem! This is so sad and so inevitable, somehow, your poem. it makes me feel as if my heart has overturned and something valuable is running out of it...
ReplyDeleteSpring has a face of death that we seldom remember... it used to be the time of starvation and pestilence, when food was scarce and light to bright. love the repeated refrain that make this into a song for me.
ReplyDeleteyour end rhymes. i picked them up late. that always makes me appreciate the form more...tied in a corner the wind forgot. really beautiful images
ReplyDeleteHauntingly beautiful, Hedge.........just beautiful.
ReplyDeletepoem that leaves me feeling slightly bereft...of what I'm not sure...the lack of home on the moon perhaps? Beautifully penned.
ReplyDeleteThe first two lines are so apolunar (& even more powerfully, metric echoes) that what follows apace was something Shakespearean, like the ghost of Ophelia singing over the water. Late love, like too early spring wiped over by snow -- too soon, too soon, and then too late. But something worse than snow now comes to the land. Who could make a home here, in this frozen spring? Thanks Hedge --
ReplyDeleteWell composed. This really toys with one's mood. Spring is coming. But what else...
ReplyDeletethe war drums are sounding, and some will only, finally hear them, too late.
ReplyDeletethis has that sense of inevitability to it. which makes it superbly crafted... and chillingly prescient.
damnation... ~
Your talent is a gift, Joy. Such a gift may be a burden to the one who owns it, but it is a blessing for those who get to share in it vicariously.
ReplyDeleteYou have made this bleak prospect of season's change sing, albeit dirge-like, and the song sparks a brief hope, so human to rely on spring, change, growth in the face of war-talk and death.
Each season comes to life through the death of another, and so well illustrated by your good self. Melancholy yet beautiful.
ReplyDeleteKind regards
Anna :o]
Oh this is a perfect picture of how spring came too soon this year. There is so much to love in this. It is so heartbreaking to see things form buds and early blooms and then see winter visit for a day a freeze it into bleak.
ReplyDeleteAt first it seemed only nostalgic, but step by step became doom-laden, with that inevitability Shay remarks on.
ReplyDeleteJoy there is no more distance between seasons and humans remaking of them, I should be sad over that but I am, instead, very pissed off,
ReplyDelete