Amy Lowell – Fourteen Lines

Crimsoned With Joy

And a bird overhead sang Follow,

And a bird to the right sang Here;

And the arch of the leaves was hollow,

And the meaning of May was clear.
Algernon Charles Swinburne

Petals

by Amy Lowell

Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart;
The end lost in dream,
They float past our view,
We only watch their glad, early start.

Freighted with hope,
Crimsoned with joy,
We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;
Their widening scope,
Their distant employ,
We never shall know. And the stream as it flows
Sweeps them away,
Each one is gone
Ever beyond into infinite ways.
We alone stay
While years hurry on,
The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

After a long winter, there is something magical with the speed with which Minnesota transforms from brown to green. Two weeks ago I would have bet that the crab apple trees would not be blooming by Mother’s Day and then, viola, magic happens. All the fruit trees burst out in blossom, the linden’s perfume places you would never expect and in general I pinch myself every morning in how beautiful it is in May in Minnesota. All of the fruit trees I planted this year came through the drought and then the record snowfall. They are ready to grow this year. May in Minnesota is darn near perfect, perfect temperatures, first half virtually no mosquitoes and every day a new flower blooming in the yard. The lilacs will be up next, then the iris, then on and on.

Smell is the Last Memory To Go

by Fatimah Asghar

on my block, a gate

on my block, a tree smelling

of citrus & jasmine that knocks

me back into the arms of my dead

mother. i ask Ross how can a tree

be both jasmine & orange, on my block

my neighbors put up gates & stare

don’t like to share, on my block

a tree I can’t see, but can smell

a tree that can’t be both but is

on my block, my mother’s skirt twirls

& all i smell is her ghost, perfume

on my block, a fallen orange

smashed into sidewalk

its blood pulped on asphalt on my

block, Jordan hands me a jasmine

by the time i get home

all its petals are gone

April and Snow

From 90 to 28 degrees in 48 hours. Welcome to Minnesota in April!

For I have time for nothing
But the endeavour to balance myself
Upon a broken world.
Amy Lowell

April Snow

by Matthew Zapruder

Today in El Paso all the planes are asleep on the runway. The world

is in a delay. All the political consultants drinking whiskey keep

their heads down, lifting them only to look at the beautiful scarred

waitress who wears typewriter keys as a necklace. They jingle

when she brings them drinks. Outside the giant plate glass windows

the planes are completely covered in snow, it piles up on the wings.

I feel like a mountain of cell phone chargers. Each of the various

faiths of our various fathers keeps us only partly protected. I don’t

want to talk on the phone to an angel. At night before I go to sleep

I am already dreaming. Of coffee, of ancient generals, of the faces

of statues each of which has the eternal expression of one of my feelings.

I examine my feelings without feeling anything. I ride my blue bike

on the edge of the desert. I am president of this glass of water.

If you google poem, April snow, you will find a multitude of poets who took up pen at the indignation. There is something profound about an April snow, the tenacity with which winter lingers, while our thoughts have already turned to green and growing things. Weather does not often align with our thoughts. I can be absolutely black on the bluest of blue sky days. I checked all my fruit trees this week when it was over 80 degrees for four days in a row. It looks like all survived both fauna and frost, patiently preparing for a bit more warmth to break out in bloom.

Snow in April

by Amy Lowell

Sunshine!
Sunshine!
Smooth blue skies,
Fresh winds through early tree-tops,
Pointed shoots,
White bells,
White and purple cups.
I am a plum-tree
Checked at its flowering.
My blossoms wither,
My branches grow brittle again.
I stretch them out and up,
But the snowflakes fall—
Whirl—and fall.
April and snow,
And my heart stuffed and suffocating
Dead,
With my blossoms brown and dropping
Upon my cold roots.