Late May

 

Late May

 

And lie at last by the little stream that brings

all gods to truth.

                                    Julia Randall

                                    The Bennett Spring Road

 

A morning ago snow the hold of it in the globe

of rain fat and splattering against the raised window

glass.  Stiff wind let it drift loose & lose its bearings

indeed if it had bearings at all this late in

the season.  An accident happening in the

atmosphere?  An arctic blast??  Muster of dust

in the cold rapid clouds?  (what kind of cold are clouds,

don’t you ever wonder?) But this it wasn’t enough

to do much but bring us to wonder.  & to hunker

the rumps of the songbirds in their

boxes & grasses & bits of bramble on bending

branches to dance to pause the persistent

gobs of their offspring for just one doubled

second and then one more– this chilling extravagant wind – 

it’s 32 degrees and tomorrow it will be June.  So I took myself

 

to the roadside swathe of lady’s slippers I saw two weeks

ago beneath all those stunted hemlocks.  They were still 

living after all these weeks & still hidden

in the middle of the evergreen’s peculiar camouflage. One  

steady drop of water on the skin of their pocketbook

of veins.  What remains but that I knelt in the wet

and made of them their dozens while the wrens

while the wood ducks while the mallards & song

sparrows . . . but we are golden here, right?  So golden.

Precious purse this rose gold rising from the snow

a month ago hello to all this hello to the season's last

blast of snow.