Poem a Day: 1

1.

Opening Day Pantoum

April breeds poetry out of the dead land,

transforming grey mounds of snow

into ice water, trickling into the earth’s veins and

flushing fat bulbs out of hiding.

Poetry transforms the grey mounds of snow

into whittled bone sculptures, fingers

that flush fat bulbs out of hiding and

prod hungry squirrels from sodden nests.

So whittle your bone sculptures, you fingers

of winter -- just try to cut the flow of poetry!

Hungry squirrels prod poetry’s sodden nests.

Sudden snow might try to bury poetry

in another winter, try to cut poetry’s flow

from waking gardens into muddied streets;

snow might try to bury poetry in sudden

white shrouds, and snatch our hearts

from waking gardens and muddied streets.

But our hearts beat with poetry, swollen, thicker

than white shrouds, our hearts snatched by

poetry’s impossible sunlight, its cosmic weight –

Our hearts beat. Poetry – swollen and thick –

streams through our unfrozen creeks, floating

our cosmic wintery weights into impossible sunlight,

into the scratching, waking, warming world,

poetry streams through our unfrozen bodies, floating

down into the earth’s widening veins, and out

into a waking, warming, scratching world, where

poetry breeds April out of the damp land.

April 1, 2014