Repetitive Repetitive
The barberry berry sticks on the small hedge,
cold slits the same crease in the finger,
the same thorn hurts. The leaf repeats the lesson.
“The Lesson”
Robert Lowell
I’m worried we’re at the beginning
of another failed crop. Today, the 9th
of May, we hover just above the freezing
mark, and yesterday someone said
snow, SNOW! up the road about ten miles.
Tulips of course have spread their petals
and rain’s their reliable concubine. But
what of bees? What when the palm
of the sun rests only long enough on their winter
house to make suggestions, to raise an eyebrow?
Though I haven’t yet walked through I bet
the peach groves are as tight as a snare
having learned last year maybe, after
a wretched winter, their expression
of lust, the maniacal frost, come on bent
and creeping knees and these pinks
and greens have no way of knowing or
too of fighting back. They just do
what they do in shock and shame
and fall helplessly like a girl’s wedding
dress, a girl who hadn’t been told, a
sheltered girl a naïve girl a praying
obedient girl, so it’s no wonder in the new
season there’s a paler green and a weaker
bloom. If I were a bee...but I’m not.
If I were the palm of the sun...but I’m not.
If I...still--spring is the great gamble, right?
The clutch of winter let go, spring those two
tight clutched casino dice at each table weighted
in someone’s favor; a shame but it’s true
right? and we almost always walk up to
the game and make a wager (even
hanging back we cast our lots) and we
wait while it all hangs in the air. Remember
Siddhartha, what he’d become in the world
of the merchants? We do: we wait and
maybe the shy bee and almost closed blossom
meet cautious as dogs and then, it’s going
to hurt but still, but still, we need each other.
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