Spring
by rebecca ~ March 6th, 2006. Filed under: Ordinary Muse, Poems & art.
(anonymous outsider art at the local public library)
The hawk hovers above the courtyard and knows
that the earth is awakening. It is mindful of the movement
below the soil, the stretching of limbs and the assembly-line
yawns. Rivers rippling past creaking bones.
Any animal with a nose knows the same. The wind kisses
each face awake with the thermal smells of melting snow and loam.
Butter on morning bread melts faster, luxuriously
releasing its frigid opaque form. Everything stirs.
And the sounds! The eaves of every man-made box plink and plonk
a free-style jazz of tin cans, wooden spoons, and stones shaken in jars.
Such music sets us free. Snow on rooftops slips on invisible shoes and leaps.
Small feet patter the earth as if millions of children trapped inside
brick schools and steel factories broke free. Horizon is a far distant fence
in a field of mud and seeds. Hearts thump chaotic bliss and bodies pulsate
heat and breathe. The deity manifest in the hawk surveys the earth spinning
toward Spring. In its tendons and in its wings, it sees a brimming lake below,
overflowing mirror of sky. Near the surface, fish glide by on silver fins.
In the center of yellow-black peonies reveal a multitude of opening eyes.