Open to the rain and flowers

What happened between the time that poetry month started and now is that spring arrived. The piles of snow are long gone. The birds are raising a ruckus at dawn and dusk. There’s a bird at twilight whose call is a creaking thing, like a complaint, or an unoiled door hinge. We don’t know what that bird is, but we enjoy making its noise back to it. A conversation for us, if not for him or her.

What happened is that the brown buds on the fruit trees have turned furry and are peeling themselves open to reveal pink. Spring is coming slowly, as it should, and the blooms are pacing themselves accordingly.

What happened is that I’ve been basking in poems every day and spinning lines in my head, and sometimes even scribbling them down in my notebook. These are blooming slowly, too.

What happened is someone long from home finally returned to where she should be.

What happened is, on a spring evening, there were three of us, driving on a road parallel to the river just after dark, music on the stereo, and we were there. I was in the back seat, with my teeth in my mouth.

Everything is beautiful.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One last poem for this month of poems.

This one is written by my friend, Mary Kane. Her book Door was published earlier this year and I love her words. I’ve had a hard time choosing just one poem to post, but I finally decided to share the last one in the book, because today the rain is pattering, and the world is getting green.

There Will Be a Woman Written in as a Wren

I’m collecting folding chairs for use in the very big poem I
am getting ready to write, something about the size of a small
auditorium, only open to the rain and flowers. You wouldn’t
believe the way the look of a young cherry tree or a street or
a husband can be altered by even a single day without speech.
I might use a broom to paint the corners of the poem, and
there’ll be a young boy tossing a baseball in the air, higher
and higher, always catching it in his glove. I have shells in
my throat. It makes it easy to sit by the window watching the
world get green in the rain, not making any sound. The young
boy with his ball and glove has no fear of the sound of his name.

–Mary Kane, from Door, Copyright © 2013 by Mary Kane