Poetry 128: Seasons

Seasons

My daughter

asks when the
Blue Jays will return.

I don’t know,

I answer honestly.

Like Diana’s sliver
of crescent moon,
there is much I cannot see
or know.

A Quaker elder

once told the story
of a Nun
who swore that
darkness
is inevitable when
you move closer
to the light.

Do you think that might be true?

In nature,
the quiet,
disconnected world
of black and white
begins to fall
away
every day it rains.

The grass gets greener,
the buds transform
into small leaves, and
the Weeping Cherry
blossoms.

 

 

Like an annual
Memorial Day Parade
of Hyacinths
and Daffodils,
our most favorite
sprouts of life
temporarily help us
forget the hidden darkness
of winter;
the longest season yet
since the birth
of my son.

 

 

My heart swells

every time I hear
the peepers peep
from the bowels
of the swamp
next to the home
where I discovered
that life will break;
their constant hum
offering the most inexplicable
comfort to my torn up
insides. 

But will it return
for a fifth time?

 

 

Probably.

 

 

I don’t fear it-
though a sane person
reasonably would.

 

 

Today there is

no sun,
and that is okay.

 

 

Each cleansing raindrop

that slides down my
bedroom window
makes the outside
world look squiggly,
though inside, I do find
more clarity.

 

 

I squint my eyes.

Is that a tree,
or a Big Friendly Giant?

Perhaps it is

one the same
anyway.

 

 

Blue Jays

now fill
my still leafless
Hydrangea-
singing their
song that is remarkably
unbeautiful
in contrast to
their radiant azure
feathers.

 

 

Their back,

I tell her.

 

 

-Me

[Inspired in part by Quaker elder, author and activist Parker Palmer.]