March
Days march on as the weather grows warmer,
now and then the wind or the rain drops down,
and the sky grows pale and colder again,
threatening the death of the Earth’s bright green
kingdom, now being born in silent bursts,
opening leaves and flowers to the eye
of everything. Spring is coming quickly
yet I am still trapped in a desert, cold,
still feeling frozen as children begin
to play in the birthing fields surrounding
me, that I am still frozen in, stony
and mossy now in the burgeoning Spring.
Clover has already begun to spring
its soft heads out of the ground to warmer
air, which, like the bees, is now surrounding
my ears with sound; busy, the bees begin
their hive’s great awakening from the cold
of wintering, no more slow and stony
vibrations for warmth, they can dance again
their guiding dances; up, down, down, up, down,
spinning, spinning, then jumping up quickly,
starting and stopping in tiny bee bursts;
they swarm along to find color in green,
to find flowers with a prismatic eye.
The march of the bees passes by my eye,
a tear would fall for the beauty of Spring,
weeping would come from me in rapid bursts,
streams pouring down my cheeks as I quickly
snatch up a dandelion and blow its down
seeds into the air, trying to spread green
into the beautiful world surrounding
me; dancing with joy, my heart, now warmer;
I would be able to laugh loud again
but Spring does not touch my hard heart, its cold
won’t melt into streams as Spring days begin
the bees’ flighty march passes me, stony,
as they travel to the mounds of stony
dirt that break quick but are rocks to the eye;
they gather around the springs that flow cold
and vibrant to wake the flowers again,
pushing themselves out to something warmer
than frozen streams; the frenzied bees begin
to dip in and out and around in bursts,
they play “near and far,” laughing in the Spring
air and drunk on the flowers’ surrounding
nectar. As they fill their frenzy dies down;
they depart the flower fields as quickly
as they came, tiny bee feet stained bright green.
I lay down in these verdant fields of green,
bees buzzing over my face, still stony
and expressionless as feathers fall down,
leaves and seeds spinning from the surrounding
trees and flower fields: the litter of Spring.
I fall asleep and into dreams quickly,
wind blowing over my face, fresh and cold,
it skips around my forehead to my eye,
drawing blinks and small tears in broken bursts
which dry in the breeze, cooling my warmer
cheeks, which, like in the Winter, are again
becoming bright. Chirping crickets begin
their concertos as the birds all begin
their own holy symphonies in the green
and solemn hall of the swamp, now warmer
caught between the sodden, angry cloudbursts
reflected in the iris of my eye,
thick and dark as their heft threatens again,
water too heavy to be upside-down,
held in the sky by glorious stony
castle clouds falling brick by brick and cold
through the womby air of the birthing Spring.
The watery mud is now surrounding
my body as the swamp, slyly, quickly
fills up with rain. I must arise quickly
and get to dry ground before floods begin,
a normal occurrence this start of Spring,
hot air mingling in the skies with dry cold,
melting the clouds that were once so stony,
flooding the skies with grey and surrounding
each inch of land with water now warmer
than the air that it falls through onto green
and growing baby leaves and duckling down,
wet and dry at the same time, and my eye
dripped into by drops that come in bursts
from my face. I wipe off the rain again
and when I remove my wet hand again
the sun is shining just or more quickly
than it had disappeared; the sky’s bright eye
has reopened to look from above down
onto me. Everything wet that is green
dries or drips off as the warm sunlight bursts
from dark grey clouds on this first day o
as the days move from cold into warmer.
I wish to move too but remain stony,
my heart, unlike the Spring air, is still cold.
As the sun goes down into surrounding
darkness the warm air that is surrounding
everything becomes, like my breath, again
cold. As the night crawls in, my blank, stony
heart wants to hide away where the warmer
memories brought on by Spring won’t begin,
were everything will stay dead in the cold,
where ice will still cover at least one eye,
where things do not change so very quickly.
My stony heart, I, do not want the Spring,
with its new flowers and new growth in green,
its newborn ducklings all covered in down
with petals that open in lovely bursts
of beautiful color, a bird that bursts
with song and flight to fill the surrounding
forest and swamp with brightness and soft green
light. I do not want this brilliant Spring;
it will only bring back dreams that quickly
die, how in these fields we used to lie down,
how my heart was at one time not stony,
but full of love, and how never again
will it be filled, how the look in your eye
could make my whole world stop and then begin,
how your hair grew lighter with the warmer
sun, how everything in me is still cold
and for as long as I see will stay cold,
though I can’t see far between icy bursts
of tears that constantly stop and begin,
clouding with ice my blinding, blurry eye
and reminding me that I have again
failed to understand anything. Warmer
air and Earth grow in the warmth of bright green
flowers and trees that are now surrounding
everything, growing over my stony
figure, a statue being quite quickly
overgrown by the rapid green of Spring,
sneaking its fingers into me deep down
in an effort to tear these hard stones down
but, once removed, they reveal only cold
emptiness. I am a shade that quickly
fades once the covering of my stony
shell that was secret, safe, and surrounding
is destroyed by the errant growth of Spring,
reckless as its births and buzzings begin,
breathing away the cold with relentless bursts,
replacing everything with verdant green
fire that kills Winter’s quiet death again
and again, birth that will not let my eye
rest, but opens it to the sun’s warmer
flames, warmer now every time it goes down
and comes up again, lighting the Earth’s green
with bright bursts from its sole all knowing eye
that quickly seeks to kill anything cold.
Again, bees begin their work surrounding
me. Stony and broken, I taste the Spring.
Burlesque Press 