the flower in the machine / sonnets of the spring

A LEGEND OF SEASONS.... ONCE AND FUTURE SPRING.... COSMIC RITUALS.... NOT

...

A LEGEND OF SEASONS

He continued his search for a place where snow would stay

through summer, decking out leaves and grass,

making season pointless, holding off

forever melts and messes, something to come.

 

He nevertheless allowed the rollicking roils,

the rises and the falls that he had seen

and had tucked away as hardened bricks of sein,

to wait for him in the midnights of his mind.

 

And the snow, sure enough, one day began

to shrink while crocuses, silent as thieves,

ganged up to take away the winter again.

And soon all greens broke loose, the riot of mud.

 

He continued to search for a place where snow would stay

though he rollicked on roils hardened to bricks of sein.

...

ONCE AND FUTURE SPRING

The creek has risen overnight.

April, it seems, commanded it.

Tender stems and buds in the flood plain

yield to muddy lapping swirls.

I cannot take my usual path.

On higher ground, yellows and blues

of profligate new growth riot.

Softly I join their silent melee.

 

I still can feel seduced by this.

One more spring is using me.

It finds me willing. But not surprised.

Someday the greatest flood will rise.

The rule of seasons itself will cease.

The ultimate mayhem will be done.

...

...

COSMIC RITUALS

He did not want to deal with whirling weather,

Rhythms of forsythia's affairs,

The wiped out frolics of a winter sky,

Fall's sobrieties, summer's mirths.

He wanted only changes he could make

In inner-worldly space, the felt domain

Where only he commanded light and time,

Free from the gears that drove the belt of belts.

 

Now he's dead, poor dude. He fell in spring,

After the forsythias had fled.

All winter he had slowed, while piles of snow

Had massed around the door, secluding him,

After warning signs in fall and summer.

Turn him, even so, machinic rites.

...

NOT

The winds of March arrived a month early.

Never before in memory winds blew stronger.

Nothing lived as vividly as sounds

Issuing like sirens from manic branches.

 

The invisible events surrounded us

As if consciousness were out of place,

The hill were all a hollowness of air,

And no one had a call to speak, or hear.

 

Never are the seasons just in time.

Nothing clarifies itself completely.

No one penetrates the seeming-sense

Of blasts of air and sways of evergreens.

 

Not unshaken, not unbravely, we,

Regardless, think we do not fail to see.

...