Does Poetry Still Say Aye to Aglaea, the Third Grace?

 

As one ages—it begins to dawn,
however slowly as years pivot,

that true presence is a gift of gifts,
cutting right into what has been

and always is—but how would we know?

By virtue of discerning, noticing,
as each breath cannot help but clear

what would have been a stifling death—

and so serving a steady air’s bath.

How it came that, in the old aevum,
eternity and lifetime were one,

and each that used to be agelic,
or “ever alike,”

as in aye—ever so—and ever alive,

a Charita,
a Grace—

but then—
whence does come the third?

O April! The Opener of the Ways!

 

On maples’ dark and slender trunks,
late April light and steady rain

brought out a delicate lace,
a moss-green script and map,

ordinarily covered by the gray
during all the other days,

when no moist contact
let that gentle threading live.

And all the while, as rain
keeps on pouring in

its dainty lines,

mist begins to lie over the trees,

wrapping it all
in a susurrous dress

that reads:

“May we have a word? Now?”

April Dandelions Lacing Stones of Dew

 

First dandelions—at the neighbor’s—
have already lost their bloom,

and at the first break of light,
their heads just above the grass

shiver and gleam—frothy drops

of tiny misty clouds, raising silver notes
over the dream of searching silence—

downy blowballs waiting
for a brush of passing breeze,

so at last they will be relieved

of the lightest of the burdens they bear on
between what is and what is not—

and they could release, even to a poem
like this,

letters—flying seeds.

End of April by the Cuyahoga River near Peninsula

 

Dogwood white splatters
the hedges of the woods,

and small violets of April too
have come along the trails

to tally up the palette,

so that, as if by some tacit plan,
or by communion, female hands

ache likewise to change and paint,

along with the dispatch of scent,
set once more to form

another embossing spell.

For April is a month that’s amical
to welcoming again such wordless,

obliquely urging ornament

which brings the season underway.

For April is an aperture—
un trou, une ouverture à Aphrilis,

a budding urging, swelling into spills.

Yet it makes me wonder how low and close
to earth,

parallel to the red of cardinals in flight,

those discreet violets
hold their purple flame—

Her Petite—Delicate Art

 

Touché—but till then
not more than a little,
something one might confuse
for nothing at all—

had one not heard,
or forgotten, a few
of the opening bars
sounding through the air,

tacitly tuning
what ought to be
with what merely is—

until, all at once,

a hand, and then
a finger, closed in;

and by that one stroke,
which any good musician
or painter would admire,

from nowhere—though where
had it hidden all this time?—

she made him remember,
ever so lightly,

as if she had been winged,

her fine and discreet measure,
that delicate art
of anti-gravity.