April is the cruellest month, its rainstorms
bleed and mix cold earth with warm rain, churning
dead soil to create bright new life, growing
strong and furious with Spring’s impatience,
prying the sleeping dead from their stone homes,
thunderstorms fixing the air with changes
wrought by flashes of brilliant golden lights
that tear their way through the green of trees,
sparking deep golden flames that sizzle loud
with the falling, pounding, malicious rain,
broken up, cold and hot, by the sun’s shine,
illuminating the manuscript leaves
of green soil and death. As earth dries, it leaves
brittle bones to disintegrate in storms,
washed to return to the earth by the rain,
a tiller and plough that, cycling loud
brings down the mountains and feeds baby trees
until, tallest, they can taste the sun’s shine,
striving and eating and always growing,
fed full by the relentless rain’s churning,
they grow, until the smallest bird alights
in their branches; a hundred million homes
for birds grow as slow as nature’s patience,
affecting the Earth’s face with quiet changes
that erase the marks of the rain’s changes,
growing mountains from their full golden leaves,
strong, silent structures that are nomad’s homes,
underneath which grow their flaming bright lights
that, scathing the hearts of trees are churning,
a mixture of patience and impatience,
slowed only sometimes by the sudden rain
that comes with the coquettishness of storms.
It seems that the fires of warmth are growing
greater daily underneath the growing trees,
the sounds of joy, sorrow, and life are loud
below branches that reflect the bright shine.
As I move past this, a pair of eyes shine
towards me. Something in the air changes
and I am no longer walking under trees.
The smell of flame and asphalt is growing
and the fire that burned under trees now storms
in old oil cans as the sounds of the loud
city keep children awake in their homes;
the memory of any forest leaves
me and I am only left with the rain
as it falls from the angry and churning
sky make a golden slate by the harsh lights
of the city’s skyline. Without patience
for the cold and hungry, without patience
for the faces that in the dark night shine,
for the fires in their oil cans churning,
for the lonely; impatient comes the rain,
angry and without any care it leaves
its diamonds to be illumined by lights,
cold and meaningless mockeries of trees,
their grey poles striking signs of the changes
wrought by the rainproof, concrete, heartless homes,
pounded flat in one breath of nature’s storms.
As the lights shine on bright eyes, their growing
laughter is crushed by the rain, growing loud,
slaughtering the eyes’ warm hopes with its loud
burial dirge, trying the poor’s patience
in the cold satisfaction of dark storms
that seem the will of the streets and their homes.
In all of these unchangeable changes,
my heart, a silent stone, is not growing warmer
or angry at the rain’s churning
that seeks to drown out the hungry eyes’ shine,
lampposts that have replaced all the trees;
my heart, in all of this, shudders and leaves,
untouched by the driving, cold, heartless rain
and wandering alone, far from streetlights.
I drift to where I can see the dim lights
of the night sky grow brighter, far from loud
cloudbursts and city smoke and dirt that leaves
bronchitis in the old and rot on trees
and robs the children’s faces of their shine,
away from the acid that falls like rain,
pounding and pounding and pounding in storms
that with a vengeance try the Earth’s patience,
bringing it ever closer to churning
all of man’s violent brilliant changes,
the roads, skyscrapers, playgrounds, and homes
into food and fuel for the planet’s growing.
As I move away the stars are growing
brighter and as I approach their soft lights
I feel a chill come as the wind changes;
the clouds obscure the sky with their churning,
the stars are all greyed in the impatience
of April, with its strong gusts leaving homes
of sky and cloud to rain down upon leaves,
cracking the Florida air with its loud
thunder, lightning in electrical storms
lighting the forests with fiery shine,
blackening the bottoms of pine trees
and making all the dry land pray for rain.
The forest is silent. Suddenly, rain
explodes everywhere from angry, growing
clouds that stomp with a hiss the firey shine
of flames that ravage the forest with storms
of heat and blaze that burn incredibly loud,
ripping open with flame the seeds of trees
that, in the warmth of the rain’s wet changes,
can now grow high to touch the stars’ dim lights
and cover the forest’s floor with their leaves
and seeds which will wait with nature’s patience
until the violent, turbid churning
of flame wakens them from their wooden homes
to build again from the rubble new homes
of green and wood from the earth and the rain,
a cycle too slow for our impatience,
such small unruly children, barely leaves
of grass in a field covered by the lights
of stars that each night spin with a churning
waltz of planets and comets and lights’ shine
in small pinpricks that in the moon’s growing
or waning are bright or dim in changing
ancient light stumbling silent to the loud
infant Earth that rages with brilliant storms
over its animals, homes, rocks, and trees
all altered by its babies, but the trees
continue to grow, ignoring the homes
and roadways of humans, wrought by our loud
machines. The Earth and the trees have changes
of their own. It is Spring, time for growing,
time for wind and for seedlings, time for storms,
time for patience and time for impatience,
as sprouts shoot up against the falling rain,
time for the sun to grow daily in its shine.
It is the heart of Spring and the stars’ lights
make faint shadows play on magnolia leaves
and blossoms that spin in the warm churning
air that mixes hot and cold in churning,
twisting currents just visible in trees
where a flock of birds flies and then alights
on its evershifting branches that shine
green and gold in the sunshine and in rain
bounce and drip with their overhanging leaves.
I look up, a plane passes over loud.
Over my shoulder, I can see pink homes
of old Yankees dying with impatience.
While all around me the world is growing,
it is rivaled by our human changes,
the forces crash with soft and quiet storms.
The storms of the changeling sky are churning
over my head with growing impatience,
the homes’ doors close up as the sky changes,
golden lights shift the green on the trees.
As the Earth is covered by the loud rain
I run for shelter and the sunshine leaves.
Burlesque Press 