Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Earth Day East of the Hudson

So the tulip blossoms fall to their death by St. Aloysius
glowing for a moment
                                     before bright mid-April sunshine
makes the slightest hints of green a portal to heaven,
the purple on the floor like Easter mourners
                                                               outside the void
of the hollow, blackened-out cathedral.

And spring won't even laugh,
its endless flowing like some rope in children's hands,
turning all that we remembered
                                                      leaf by leaf
            to something new,
                                           the emptiness of music.

So much that we do, as humans, is indigestable:
our thoughts of predators
                                           are in our water,
our wasted nervous energy
                                              blows through our air,
but somehow, we cannot believe
the earth that always comforts us
                                     cannot release what's stuck.

The fish are coming back
                                           to Antarctica,
the whales are going home because they do not need
                                to feel our pain any more.
New alphabets are forming,
                as always with our hearts to pick out words
from an apple tree that keeps on growing.